The XX Protocol
by dutchrub
Summary: She's got ghosts. Too bad she can't remember any of them. Reverse harem. There will be smut. Slow burn all around while she figures out her damn life.
1. Chapter 1

_One big A/N, and you'll pretty much never hear from me again:_

 _I'm 35, married with a kid, and work in construction (hence, a terrible pottymouth). Why am I writing this?_

 _Short answer: Because idgaf._

 _Long(er) answer: Because I've got a thing for Korean dudes, an obsession with reverse harems, a yen to fight the Power, and, damnit, girls are great._

 _A few notes about the story: It is already complete with new chapters released every Friday. Chapters are generally at least 5,000 words a piece, so settle in and enjoy._

 _This is an alternate timeline (of an alternate timeline—ooh, trippy). It takes place one month after Thomas' arrival. Alby has already survived the Changing (which does not return memories in my story), and Thomas is already elected a Runner. I have taken a few liberties with the orientation of things in the Glade, kind of an amalgamation of the book and the movie, and it's no longer underground (I like the drama real elements impart)._

 _And I have also removed the mind-control element from WICKED because it always felt counterintuitive to me that a scientist would want to limit the abilities of her subjects. I could expound on this forever and wax scientific, but you don't care. Whatever, I do what I want!_

 _On a less dramatic note, there be swearing and smut in these thar pages. These are teenagers we're talking about, and I'm a grown-ass woman—damnit! Earmuffs and blindfolds are available at the beginning of any extra naughty chapters if you feel compelled to skip (aka, I'll let you know)._

 _Oh, and each chapter lists a song that inspired at least one moment in that chapter (lyrics often have nothing to do with it, be forewarned), so if you're feeling inclined, go listen (though most of the songs are in Korean because, after a decade, it borders on an obsession for me). Finally, thanks for reading!_

 _(x-posted under the same screenname on Wattpad because of Fanfiction's anti-smut rules. I will let you know when you can find the naughtiest chapters there.)_

* * *

 **Chapter One  
** _B.A.P. – Wake Me Up_

She awoke to the persistent hiss of wind and to a papery rustling she couldn't quite place, like the edge of a memory of a memory. There was a buzz, too, or rather a hum, a murmur, closer but still unfamiliar. She pinched her eyes tighter shut and, with a long inhale, stretched from fingertip to toe, enjoying the tingles that traveled up and down her body as they awakened long-dormant limbs.

More murmuring, louder now and closer, too.

"Slim it, you slintheads," growled a deep voice staked with unquestionable authority, and the hum subsided.

Was that even English? Wait, was she thinking in English? Things were fuzzy, like trying to listen to a conversation underwater or opening her eyes in a pool full of chlorine, and not just the nonsense spewing from the ring leader's mouth. Everything was muddled, from the scratchy fabric chafing the small of her back to the humid air that pressed like a weight onto her chest.

She opened her eyes. A ring of masculine faces, dirty and rugged, hovered over her like she was a specimen on an examination table. Eyes of every hue and shape peered down at her, with each emotion on the spectrum represented: fear, curiosity, annoyance, lust, hope. Suspicion. So much suspicion in the eyes of the chocolate-skinned man whose face took precedence over them all.

Above them, a thatched ceiling tapered upward, the weave so tight she couldn't see what might lay beyond it, but light filtered in from somewhere as muted orange warmed each smudged visage. It softened hard jaw lines but intensified cautious glares, lighting little fires of concern in their whites.

Where was she?

 _Who_ was she?

The realization, or rather the lack of, came as swiftly as her response to it. She had forgotten her identity, but she had not forgotten how to run.

A heartbeat. Two. By the third, she was thundering through the crowd, and by the fourth, she burst forth into a world of light and color. Color, so much color. Green overwhelmed her. She was engulfed by it, a thousand different shades of it—pear, mint, moss, pine, lime, olive—each more bewildering than the last. It was foreign and familiar all at the same time. The only things she had of her past life were yellows and browns and grays and blacks on the perimeter of her memory. Green made her feet stutter and her heart skip. Her battered sneakers slipped on grass already harvesting dew for an evening cocktail of its own, and she pitched forward. Her fingertips grazed the unkempt emerald mop in a runner's stance, and with the ensemble of voices behind her louder than any pistol, she launched forward, a loosed arrow barreling toward a murky target.

Escape was her only option. She wasn't safe here; how could she be safe here? She needed to get there, a swelling doorway in the distance, the black bastion directly ahead of her. She didn't know green, but she knew black. She had just awoken from it. If she could get back to it, maybe she would reemerge on the other side of this nightmare.

At first, she'd been so spellbound by all the green that she hadn't noticed the great walls beyond it, but now all she could she were walls. Looming, soaring, around her body and in her head without break. They were as much a character here as the urgent voices echoing off them. There was only one fracture she could focus on, and she was closing in on it.

The voices behind her grew more distant with every footfall, but their tenor became more desperate. Over the roar of blood in her ears, she couldn't make out much, but there was no mistaking the chants of "Stop! Stop!"

Like an escaped rabbit, she alighted across the perfect expanse of verdure. Her knees pumped high and her arms jackhammered. Her breath came in firm gusts like a pneumatic gun. It wasn't just fear that propelled her forward, but her quest for an identity. She felt certain that somewhere beneath those gathering shadows she would find who she was. She wasn't going to stop.

Ahead of her, two silhouettes materialized from the blackness. They were warmer grays now, and they shimmered along her horizon as split egg yolk orange oozed over the perimeter of the wall.

As if waiting for that flamboyant cue, a guttural clatter echoed from the abyss beyond the wall, like the grinding of mammoth clock innards chugging to life. Stone grumbled and metal wheezed as the doorway to her destiny began to shutter.

She was close, but was she close enough?

White hot fuel pulsated through every limb, saturated every muscle, until she was nothing but single-minded combustion that could only be extinguished by the darkness.

Those faraway silhouettes were people now, more young men with perplexed faces trotting habitually back to the greenery. She blew by them with only one glance to spare.

Almond eyes as toasted as the man's skin stared back at her. Coal black hair as rich as an animal's hide ruffled as he ran. A flare of something—surprise, maybe recollection—twitched at the corner of his full lips. His broad chest and shoulders stretched against his filthy shirt, and his biceps flexed under tattered sleeves. Though their connection was brief, somehow it lasted an eternity, long enough for her to assess the inherent danger the man posed. There was a panther under that tanned skin, and she was still a rabbit.

"Minho! Stop her!" the leader's voice boomed behind her, a cannon shot in the evening air.

Out of the corners of her eyes, she watched the Asian man skate sideways at his quick direction change, his feet shuffling under him as dew greased his wheels.

Ahead of her, the clanking heightened to a crescendo as the great stone doors prepared their conclusive clap, fingers of corded metal ready to interlace and seal them shut. She could make it—would make it.

Someone tackled her from the side, sending them both sliding across the field. Dampness permeated the back of her shirt while heat encircled her waist. She lifted her head and saw those almond eyes staring into her. There was mirth in them, triumphant joy punctuated with an incredulous laugh.

"I caught her, boys!" he whooped. His laughter was wild. "I caught my Shadow!"

Biting his lower lip, he smiled down at her, his fingertips brushing under her jawline as his hand curled around the base of her head. "I caught you. You're mine."

The doors sputtered beside her, only fifty feet away. One last gasp from them, one from her, and she could still end this the way she had hoped.

She looked back to her captor, to his crowing grin, and without another thought, she hefted her knee into the soft cavity below his rib cage. He crumpled on his side, curled up in a wheezing ball with his eyes scrunched shut, unable to bear witness to the escape of his prey.

She crawled forward for a moment until she found her legs again and rose proudly upward. But her momentum was gone, knocked out of her with her breath. She had unknowingly taken her last gasp on the ground while that arrogant man had celebrated above her. Her feet dove forward in a last-ditch hope for safety, managing a wild hobble for a few moments until her body could no longer support her, and she folded down, pathetic limb by pathetic limb, leaving her a gasping creature plucked from a deep, dark sea and tossed into a verdant meadow.

How long had it been since she'd run this fast? Had she ever? It felt like death. Every capillary constricted and her temples throbbed. Each breath roiled through her lungs like magma and spewed between her papery lips.

Her fingers grazed the cool stone of the doors as they issued their thunderous final assertion. So close, not close enough.

Footsteps behind her. Dozens of them. She didn't have the strength—or the heart—to face them. So she laid there resentfully, ass half-cocked in the air for them to kiss it.

"Son of a bitch," one of them managed—not the leader nor the panther—between huffs of strangled breath, "she's fast."

"What should we do with her, Alby?" asked another voice.

There was an agonizing stint of silence as her ribs flared and her lips sucked in dew. She couldn't will her body to move, but her newly keen ears detected the scratch of a thumb over late-day chin stubble. The dominant baritone she already recognized sucked his teeth once and said, "She's a Greenie, same as we all were. Bring the she bean back, Minho, provided you can pick yourself up."

Chuckles rumbled around her, followed by a growl tinged with the lingering bitterness of burned coffee. The footsteps receded, and the iron chains that constricted her chest eased back a few links at a time until she unleashed her own defeated groan. It was the first time she had heard her own voice, well, that she could remember, softly feminine with the slightest hint of a warm rasp curling up at the end, and it sounded just as foreign as everything else.

"Shuck," came the grumble now more familiar to her than her own voice. "You're a Greenie now, huh? Figures with my shuck luck. Bastard Creators."

Her stomach lurched. The panther. He was getting up, expletives spilling from his lips as each vertebra straightened. She heard the crick of his shoulder rolling back into place and the squeal of leather straps pulling taut over his chest.

Her body's response to him was immediate. Though she had little left in her adrenaline reserves, her toes curled under as her legs buckled and straightened, buckled and straightened, a newborn foal standing for the first time.

"Don't even think about it," he stated flatly. She had yet to turn around, but she could tell from the tone of his voice that his arms were folded across his chest.

She limped around to face her captor. His gaze was unflinching, surprise no longer creasing the otherwise smooth planes of his round cheeks; there was more annoyance there than anything else.

She glanced down at herself for the first time, spying only a grass-stained tank top now yanked scandalously low over her breasts and a pair of sodden cargo pants that weighed her down almost as much as her loss of her identity.

She returned her attention to the panther, who had not moved a millimeter. Her hands trembled at her side as her body betrayed her show of defiance. She clenched her fists.

"I'm not afraid of you, you know," she said at last, shocked that she even remembered how to speak when nothing else of her seemed to remain.

"I know," he replied matter-of-factly. "The shaking will go away once you finish your adrenaline withdrawals."

She made no response.

"Let's go," he ordered as he unsnapped the hooks that secured a small backpack to him and looped it over his left shoulder.

She took a wobbly step forward, but without preamble, he turned, backed into her, and folded her over his empty shoulder as effortlessly as a sack of potatoes.

"I can walk," she barked into his ear and thrashed, but his arm coiled around her ass and siphoned away her final burst of energy.

"If I wanted to get back by midnight, I'd let you. As it is, you've lost your walking privileges. And no more kicking today, or I'll drag you back by your hair."

She sagged over his shoulder. There was no more point arguing because he was right. By itself, standing had been a challenge, but when she looked up, she saw how far she had run in the first place. Wherever she was, it was huge. Sweeping tracts of open meadow fanned out into a crescent of trees that eventually hugged back against those soaring walls. The only thing to soften their gray faces were the crocodile green veins of tenacious vines, lending eerie life to stone giants. Far ahead of them strode a group of about ten men, her former pursuers. Even with their sizeable lead back to their encampment, they were little more than halfway there themselves. No way she would have made it back before dark, let alone by the middle of the night, especially when she was struggling to even hold her head alert.

From her aerial perch, she smelled sweat and salt and a pungent tang of a hard day of labor. When the breeze kicked up again, notes of moist earth and encroaching night darkened her nostrils. This world—her new world—was primal and grounded.

By the time they had reached the point where she had originally spotted the other men, her trembling had subsided, but now her abdomen ached from the grind of the panther's sinewy shoulder. He, too, grunted more frequently and consistently readjusted her over him.

"I can walk now," she reasserted.

"I'm sure you can," was his only reply.

Night arrived on gradual wings of azure, navy, and raven. The deeper they plunged into the curtain of darkness, the sharper the pinpoints of starlight pricked through until chandeliers of faint blue flickered above them. A fleshy rainbow of galaxy unfurled overhead, emitting a ghostly pallor to her human taxi's profile. He didn't spare the natural wonder a single glance.

She endured the last stretch to the huts through winces and grunts, both her own and his, as each step he took had noticeably more bouncing and jerking, though whether it was on purpose or from fatigue, she couldn't be certain. She hadn't expected to be happy to return to the handmade wooden shack where, for all intents and purposes, she had effectively been reborn, but she was so sore and infuriated that she reveled in its knotty silhouette.

Dozens of men emerged from the shadows surrounding a central bonfire nearly as tall as the surrounding buildings. The boisterous bragging and playful hollering subsided the minute the unusual pair of travelers punctured the warm circle. Someone wolf-whistled.

"Prettiest you've looked in years, Minho," someone yelled from the crowd.

"Aw, you thought I was pretty? I'm flattered, Gally, but with a nose like yours, you've got no chance."

When she finally managed to catch sight of the stranger, she noticed that indeed Gally's nose was, to say the least, unusual with its wide, bulbous shape and lumpy texture. The dark-haired young man scowled, firelight dancing in his irises.

Another boy with tousled brown hair and tiny craters dappling his cheeks snorted. "Caveman Minho return with conquest."

She felt the muscles beneath her tender stomach undulate as she was slowly lowered down her chauffeur's back. She staggered and rubbed the expanse of her belly, noting its soft swells and the dimple of her bellybutton.

Minho stepped aside and let the relentless blaze wash her in crimson and gold. Another snake of gossip rippled around the circle as her features became clear to everyone but herself. Her skin instantly warmed both from the fire and from a flush, driving out the chill the dew and the evening had instilled.

The leader of her original pursuit, the one they called Alby, emerged from the fold with his arms neatly tucked across his chest, both hands massaging his impressive biceps. His dark skin melted with the fire, but his expression did not soften and the light only reignited that spark of suspicion already in his eyes. "This is your Shadow, huh?"

"Was," Minho amended. He did not favor her with one more glance.

Alby snorted briefly. "You know your name, she bean?"

Though her adrenaline had been consumed for the day, something within her straightened her spine despite the protestations of her ab muscles. "No."

One word from her was evidently as potent as an atomic bomb. Previously quiet murmurs erupted into a raucous frenzy as her voice played off the twisting fingers of the flames. Boys jostled against each other, hopping over each other's shoulders and shoving lanky frames out of the way. Faces of all shapes and colors leered forth like a zoetrope of souls that wasn't so much threatening as it was unnerving. There was not a woman's face to be plucked from the crowd. She felt that sideshow vibe again, like she was a unicorn being peddled by some carnival barker.

"Enough!" Alby roared, his teeth yellow with fire, and the group once again fell into a restless silence. "If you shucking shanks can't get a hold of yourselves, you'll find this entire camp without food tomorrow, you hear me?"

The crowd grumbled in assent.

Alby turned to a bearded fellow, more bush than man. "Good that, Frypan?"

The hairy man nodded. "Good that."

Satisfied, Alby returned that peerless gaze back to her and jutted his chin forward. "I'm sorry 'bout this, but we gonna have to cut this night short because these slintheads can't behave. Try not to hold it against them. Things are different this time."

She nodded once, afraid another word would set off more firecrackers.

"You come with me," he insisted, striding toward her with the same demeanor of a warden. "I'll see ya safely through the night. You can worry 'bout your name and everything else tomorrow." He pushed through the crowd and, halfway through, turned back to her. "I ain't askin', Greenie."

Relieved to see she was no longer going to be hoisted overhead like produce, she took a few cautious steps forward. She brushed by Minho, her elbow prodding the same tender flesh her knee had found earlier, and the corners of her eyes added a matching sharp look. She was rewarded with a soft grunt, but if he noticed her look, he didn't show it.

The wave of gossip closed rank behind her, sloshing overhead of the troop of young men and drowning out the crackle of logs.

Ahead of her, Alby held a torch to light their way through a thickening canopy of trees. Shadows danced across murky green boughs as the amber hues illuminated freshly crocheted dreamcatchers of spider webs. In the darkness, beyond the protective umbrella of the torch, she caught a flash of something small and red, like the eyes of some animal. She blinked, and the lights were gone, but their memory stayed crisp on the other side of her corneas like a lingering camera flash.

After some distance, and noticeably out of earshot of the others, Alby broke the strained silence between them. "It gets easier."

She said nothing.

"We have rules here, Greenie, and they help with the transition. It'll be hard being, well, what you are, but don't take nobody's klunk, and the days will get…" He paused. "More manageable."

More manageable. Like this place was a disease to be coped with, not cured.

"I know what it seemed like today, but we really do look out for each other in the Glade. We have to."

Alby said nothing more, and at last, they broke through the stand of trees and came to a single hut in the center of a small patch of grass. Overhead, the fissure of the galaxy oozed, black veins leaking ruddy luminesce like a hemorrhaging wound. Beside their feet, a few peeling stumps bucked up from the ground as rotted teeth, likely the trees that had been sacrificed for this very hut. The door to the place was ajar, waxy candlelight inside shaking its tiny fist at that willful darkness that would not relent.

Only after taking in her dismal surroundings did she notice him. Below a smaller torch, squatting on one low stump with one ankle propped on his other knee, a man with a cascade of fair blonde hair waited with a welcoming grin on his face. He didn't look as surprised to see her as his other cohorts had, and his eyes didn't widen in the same wonder. His skin was paler than most of the other men she had seen today, lending an air of fragility to him that was swiftly contradicted by the sinew that adorned his wiry frame. He was no less filthy than anyone else she had come across, yet somehow he seemed outside of this place all together. When he finally stood and strode forward, he limped heavily to one side, but his smile didn't falter.

"Oy, oy," the stranger said with an accent that she couldn't yet place. He stuck out a hand, the first sign of friendship she had received all day. "Name's Newt."

She smiled tightly without a proper response but shook his hand. She could feel chalky dirt on his fingertips and thick pads of calluses on his palm.

"No name yet, huh? S'all right. Some of us are luckier than others with that. Me, I came up with mine, though I wished I hadn't. Newt doesn't feel so proud a name as Alby or Minho."

Alby shrugged. "Could be worse. Could be Zart the Fart."

"Good that," the blonde responded, his tongue poking the corner of his mouth as he assessed her.

"Thanks," she said as she glanced between the two very different men. "For trying to make me feel better."

With raised brows, Newt said, "You caught that, huh? Enjoy it while it lasts. Alby doesn't extend such generosity for long." In response, their leader reached out one thick paw and grasped Newt by the shoulder, squeezing it just tight enough to crease the corners of the blonde's eyes. "See what I mean?"

She offered an appreciative half-smile and glanced once again at her surroundings.

"Being that it's your first night here, we figured it might be good for ya to have some company, to help ya settle in," Alby said.

"You mean keep me here?" she translated.

"Might be tough to do that. We already know you have wheels for legs, and just about the only one here who could outrun you is Minho—" Alby paused to allow her to pucker her lips in distaste. "—but seeing as you keep making that face when someone mentions his name, we'll try a different tactic—the honor system."

Newt sniggered. "Take pity on the poor limping fella, would ya?"

Their tactic was already paying off. The itch in her legs eased as if just their kindness were a medicinal balm. With brains like this, she could see why everyone looked to Alby to direct them.

"Remember when I said we have rules?" Alby added. "Trusting each other is implicit in 'em. You make it peaceably through tonight, and you start earning that trust. Then tomorrow you can start earning your keep."

"Another rule?" she asked.

"Quick learner," Newt observed.

"How many of them are there?"

Alby ticked them off on his free hand in perfect recitation: "One: Everyone does their part. No slackers. Two: Never hurt another Glader. Three: Never go outside the Glade, unless you're a Runner."

She blinked. "You can go outside?"

But Alby shook his head firmly. "No, you can't. That's the point. Now, look, we can talk more about this tomorrow," he said with finality. He shifted his torch to his other hand, and she could tell he was eager to get back to the men who had already proven difficult to corral that night. "You can relax with Newt here. He's one of the best of us."

"Us?" she asked.

"Us Gladers," Newt replied with a quirked brow. "This is the Glade, our home—for now. Bloody hell, Alby, haven't you taught this Greenie anything yet?"

The dark-skinned man swept his head from side to side in one rhythmic motion, his brow furrowing deeply. "You didn't see her. She took off faster than those shuck pigs when Winston let 'em out. Damn near as wily, too."

Newt's eyes danced at the vision of her jet to freedom, and he leaned a bit closer. "So, how'd they get ya?"

She ground her teeth audibly at the memory of her humiliating ride back to their camp, and unconsciously, she rubbed her stomach, though the sharp pains had faded to a dull ache by this point. She couldn't see herself, didn't even know what she looked like, but she knew she radiated fury.

Newt pulled back and squinted at Alby. "What'd you do to her?"

Alby balked. "We saved her from a night in the Maze. Come tomorrow, she'll thank us. Well, most of us. Prolly not Minho."

The pucker on her face at the mention of that name again was all the confirmation Newt needed. He laughed. "He'll grow on you."

"What? Like a tumor?"

Both men smiled.

Alby bid them goodnight, saving one last look for her, though it was hard to tell in the shadows what it meant. There was still suspicion there, sure enough, but it had tempered some in favor of another emotion—worry, maybe.

As the forest snuffed out the gold of Alby's torch, the world shrank to the much smaller circle of Newt's own light. "It's a little dark," he said after a moment, "but I'll do my best to give you the grand tour."

He gestured with his hand for her to move forward, and she entered a hut that looked nearly the same as the one from which she had awoken only a few hours earlier, though, admittedly, in her haste, she hadn't gotten a great look at that one. This hut was one roughly square room, with large gaps in between each branch that composed its walls, though it was enough to break the wind that still shook the canopy around them. There was one small window on either end of the hut, only large enough to afford a reasonable panorama of their surroundings. The floor was dirt, and even in the wan candlelight, she could see it billow up from her shoes.

"We're a bit south of the Homestead, where everybody else sleeps. This one was never really meant to house anyone, but then we've never had a girl here either. Sorry for the sparse supplies."

Newt wasn't kidding. A hammock made of stained canvas and frayed rope sagged between two stocky support posts. There was a rustic table with enough room for the candlestick, a jug of water, and a pack of some sort of hard tack cracker. No chairs, no shelves, no stocks of any kind.

Newt nodded toward the crackers. "That was the best Frypan could rustle up at this late hour, so I'm sorry to say you'll have to wait until breakfast for something better."

She didn't care. She lunged for the crackers and began shoving them into her face with total disregard for any assumed manners or custom. Newt didn't seem to mind, but he did seem to be waiting for something—that twitch of an oncoming grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. A moment later, it hit her.

She choked on the powdery explosion that detonated in her mouth as her teeth pulverized the crackers. They were drier than desert air and just about as sandy. The jug of water made a lot more sense now. She dove for it and tilted her head back, pouring the liquid directly onto the tumbleweed gathered in the corner of her mouth. It changed the texture of the ball to something more like a paste, no more appetizing but at least capable of being swallowed.

He laughed at the boys' little hazing ritual. "They'll fill you up all right, if you can ever get them down."

"What was that Alby just said about trust?" she wheezed, beating her fist between her collar bones.

Newt gave her a minute to recover herself, and when he saw she'd make no more attempts at a bedtime snack, he bowed his head. "You'll want to snuff out the candle as soon as you're ready. We're always short on resources here, so save what you can."

"Thanks, Mom," she quipped, feeling more herself—wait, was her self usually this snarky?—than she had since she'd awoken.

"We'll make a Glader out of you yet, I think," Newt said. "I'll be right outside should you need anything. Just promise me you won't leave."

His last words hung heavy, almost as if they were a dreary decoration nailed to the wall. There was caution in them and, this time, unmistakable worry. His eyes held hers, as good as a contract written in blood between them, and she said, "Good that."

His teeth flashed with his surprise. "You do catch on quick, she bean. I wonder what this place will make of you."

Newt turned toward the door and headed out, one footfall distinctly heavier than the other. He paused in the frame and said over his shoulder, "Goodnight, Greenie." He dragged the door shut, and its base swept the floor with the soft whisk of a broom.

Greenie. Evidently, she was green now, too, a part of this bold new world and no longer a part of her muted old one, wherever it had been. Her body thrummed with anxiety but also anticipation.

She blew out the candle and eased into the hammock, testing its sturdiness slowly before allowing her body to collapse into it. Where mere hours ago she had welcomed the blackness beyond the walls, thinking it would bring her to some clarifying light on the other side, now that blackness surrounded her, it felt more oppressive than comforting. There was nothing welcoming about a sea without break or a sky without horizon. It was lonely and isolating, and she was thankful to hear the shuffle of Newt's boots on the other side of the hut.

Her cradle swayed lightly with the cadence of her natural rhythms, but any memories of a mother's love had been robbed from her, and so the motion felt more dizzying than anything. The wings of the hammock were too wide for her small frame, and they cupped her until she could only see a small sliver of the thatched roof. The canvas molded to her as a caterpillar in its chrysalis.

Transformation. Hours ago she had been a rabbit, then a fish, a foal, and finally a unicorn. Who would she be by morning?

 _I wonder what this place will make of you._


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

 _(Inspired in part by NCT127 – Another World)_

 _Brief OT PSA: NCT127 is an incredible group with out-of-this-world vocalists, stellar rappers, and bangin' bops. Their albums are basically the soundtracks to my life. Please go give them some love._

* * *

She slogged through waist-deep seas of ochre under the watchful glare of turbulent slate skies. She'd been doing it so long, her hands had turned a mustard color that would not scrub off. She was bone-weary to the point of collapse, but she could not stop. Her knees pumped high, releasing a gentle sucking sound as they broke the surface, but progress was tedious or non-existent—she couldn't tell. There were no markers, no dunes, no distant mountains by which to judge her journey. There was no beginning or end to the yellow—just yellow. But there could be no stopping, of that much she was sure.

She was alone, but somehow music played. A woman hummed, though she could see no one else. Such tenderness in the notes, deep at first and melancholy, but by the end somehow hopeful, where a cheerful whistle, as bright as a songbird, would fade out and signal the beginning anew. The song looped until it felt a part of her. It wrapped around her and drove her feet ceaselessly forward, like a war drum fueling her pilgrimage. Soon, she began humming in time with it until the other woman stopped and it was just herself carrying the tune.

Despite that fact that it seemed she'd been marching in place, gradually, ochre faded to marigold, which faded khaki, until all of the color had been vacuumed away. The sea grew shallower, too, until it barely covered her feet. When there was nothing left but bitter white beneath her, only then did it appear.

It was taller than the sky, taller than she had thought even her imagination could dream, impossibly tall. It was a wall with no way around it, no way over it, and unlike the sea she had just trudged through, she knew with certainty that even walking forever would never bring her to its end. It was the color of cannonballs or thunderheads about to burst, a seamless block of gray without imperfection. But the same way she knew she could never get around it, she also knew that she needed what was on the other side.

She looked down at her hand and found a spoon the same ethereal gray as the wall; in fact, it seemed to be made of the same material. It would be the only thing to break through the wall, that much was clear, the way only a diamond could cut a diamond.

She leaned forward, pressing one hand against the wall's surface, but it balked at her touch, and its resistance vibrated up her arm. She withdrew her palm, yet the sting of its disapproval lingered. She raised the spoon next, but her hand stilled before she could make a connection. She needed to go beyond this point, but she wasn't supposed to.

Something grabbed her foot and squeezed hard. She looked down and found five fingers, one of them severed at mid-joint, shackling her ankle. The hand grew up from a wrist rooted beneath the downy white, but it was firm and could not be pulled out, almost as if it had tunneled underneath the wall. Long, black canyons spidered down its forearm, turning veins into fissures.

She stomped against it with her free foot, but her thrashing attracted another hand, this one slimmer, more feminine, with long fingers, the tips of which had rotted back to expose ivory bone. Unmistakable teeth marks marred the tip of the ring finger. This hand snagged the heel of her other foot and pulled it back down. The matching set to both hands joined the fray and ratcheted her firmly beneath the opaque waves.

One last hand cut through the undulating white, this one the most ghastly of all. It was a baby's hand, maybe even smaller, almost like a doll's hand, but much of the chubby flesh had been flayed back to show only gangrenous muscle and putrid tissue.

"No!" she screamed, finding her voice at last, "Don't touch me! Don't!"

She teetered back and forth on her ankles, but she could not break free, and she pitched forward, the spoon at last colliding with the wall. Though it was blunt and crass, it gouged the stone with the ease of a scoop in melting ice cream. A small dollop, not larger than a marble, popped out and thunked beneath the billowy surface of the waves. The hands, as frenzied as sharks, dove down below the white in hot pursuit, leaving her mercifully alone once more.

The humming resumed, and her rankled nerves soothed enough to let breath inside her lungs again. She looked back at the wall and found the tiny gouge had unearthed one perfect pearl.

* * *

She awoke with a gasp that seized her throat and sent her sputtering. She thrashed against the suffocating embrace of her hammock as she searched for fresh air and hooked her legs over the edge of the canvas so she could rock herself up.

She ran a hand back through her hair to find short locks of thick, buoyant curls coupled with crinkled frizz from a night of unrelenting humidity. A few chunky ringlets helped mop up the sweat that had accumulated on her brow, but they were too short for her to accurately gauge their color.

The wind hissed outside the hut along with the papery rustling she had heard yesterday, which she now knew to be busy leaves. This time, there was no excited whispering or a ring of faces to accompany the new day, just a dusty brown hut with a newly christened Glader in it.

Much was exactly the same as it had been yesterday, the sounds, the sights, even the smells of awakening earth and rotting flora, but one critical thing had changed.

She knew her name.

With a jerk of the wonky door, she was thrust once again into the carousel of green wilderness. She closed her eyes and smiled, then breathed for what felt like the first time in a day. When she reopened her eyes, she found Newt as he had promised, still outside her hut, his back sagging against its walls as his fingers sharpened the tip of a fresh bough stripped of its youngling leaves.

In the morning sun, his hair was more like straw while his eyebrows were just a few shades darker. They raised at the sight of her, framing his large eyes the color of smooth leather.

Before he could even issue a greeting, she trumpeted, "Rosalind." She offered her hand to him again, and this time when Newt shook it, it felt like a real introduction.

"Morning, Rose," he said and then added in a whisper, "too many syllables for these lazy shanks."

She nodded, her spirits no less dampened by the immediate addition of a nickname.

"You hungry?" he asked after a moment.

"As long as it isn't those horrible crackers again, I could eat just about anything."

"There are no promises here. We've got to go with what we got, but Frypan can make almost anything edible."

Newt strolled forward, his limp much more pronounced without the cloak of the night to conceal it, and as Rose walked behind him, she watched his hips shift sharply up and down over the uneven terrain. He raised a low branch over his head and ushered her underneath, and she was back at the place he had called the Homestead. The journey from her hut back to their encampment was shorter without the distortion of darkness, and it was much easier to appreciate everything the Gladers had wrought there.

Whereas last night their buildings had seemed paltry next to the roar of the all-consuming bonfire, now they stood rather proud, if a little angular, but still respectable testaments to the fortitude of these young pioneers. One building in particular dwarfed all the others, which Newt referred to as the Homestead proper, a multi-floor patchwork dwelling where the boys slept and where their wounds were treated in the back in the addition they called the Med-hut. Rose recognized that enclave as the place she had initially escaped. A few dozen sleeping bags peppered the yard in front of the Homestead, but there were no boys in them.

In the center of their encampment was the charred pit of last night's revelry, ringed by smooth rocks and a lonely bucket, but no men, only two sassy chickens who scavenged the dusty paths for food. There was also a large circle of bare earth trampled by hundreds of footprints and bordered by orderly lines of even more prints—those of spectators, she imagined.

Though their makeshift town square was abandoned, Rose's ears picked up the telltale sounds of boasts and chiding over the occasional chicken cluck. Newt motioned forward past a pretty little patch of garden showcasing the bashful red of young tomatoes and the jubilant orange of squash blossoms as well as rows and rows of feathery heads of carrots and the eerie white hands of fennel. There were lines of other crops she couldn't readily recognize, and a quaint stand of fruit trees too far away to covet. Nearby, an old-fashioned water pump sprouted up like one of its leafy neighbors.

As Newt's tour glossed over the other remaining buildings—including a dingy structure toward the other end of the Glade that, even from a distance, reeked of excrement and another fetid smell, as well as a silhouette of some imposing cube shuttered by brambles and shadows—they steadily grew closer to a raucous din emanating from somewhere ahead of them.

"And that's the Kitchen," her guide said, pointing to yet another long log house in front of them. "Three squares a day, and if the shank is feeling generous, Frypan will throw in a snack. The food's not too bad either for a guy who came up only knowing his name, though nobody will tell him that."

Only a few steps further and the smell of slightly burnt meat and freshly baked bread wafted across the steady breeze. Hints of fruit and sugar followed soon after until Rose's mouth was wet with hunger.

"We're a bit late, but there should be some scraps left," Newt said as he approached the door. His hand stilled on the grimy rope handle and he smiled wryly. "Ah, it seems everyone's been waiting for you, Greenie."

With a firm tug, the planks loosened from their frame and swung outward, unleashing a nearly visible cloud of breakfast smells and eager chatter. It was smoky inside, both from the cooking and the heat of so many bodies in one small place, but spears of cheerful saffron pierced through thin cracks in the thatched roof enough to shoo away any murkiness. Cups and plates clanked over the noise of the occupants, who were so boisterous that all of their voices melded into one indistinguishable shout. But all of that ceased the moment the two silhouettes emerged from the glaring sunshine.

There may as well have been a spotlight illuminating Rose. Everyone inside looked up, everyone except a well-muscled, hunched back at the head of the room, which she presumed was Minho, evidently still bitter about their run-in yesterday. Even from the entryway, she spotted his defiant glare zeroed in on a knot in the rough-hewn table as he jammed a wedge of a sandwich in his mouth.

Newt, however, seemed delighted at having the whole Glade's full attention. His thin frame stood a little taller, straightening even his limp, and his cheeks swelled upward with his pride. "Listen up, you shanks, this here is Rose."

A round of cheers through half-chewed food reverberated from the rafters at the mention of her name. Once they'd settled, Newt continued, "Rose is a Glader now, same as all of us. It doesn't really bear repeating, but the same rules here that apply to you, apply to her."

But it did bear repeating, and they all knew it. Implications spiced the already fragrant air.

After a curt wave to the crowd, Rose turned to follow her companion. They weaved through the labyrinth of tables, dodging seating invitations and overly zealous grins, until they reached the head of the cafeteria. A long buffet table spanned the width of the Kitchen, its center sagging from the weight of the dishes and the lack of support below. Almost everything had been plundered. There was an enormous wooden bowl with a handful of squashed blueberries bathing in purple juice, a flat tray with two wedges of ham sandwiches and a single buckwheat pancake, a platter with five pieces of shrunken bacon, and a clear plastic tub with a few small spoonfuls of scrambled eggs. At the end of the table squatted several pitchers of water and pulpy juice and one completely decimated jug of milk.

Newt scowled at the slim pickings. "It's not a rule but a rule of thumb here: you oversleep, you don't eat."

"You could have woken me," Rose groused.

"Some lessons are best learned the hard way here." There was a grim tone to his words which she could not interpret.

They split the remaining food between the two of them and whirled around. It seemed now that every table had magically sprouted room for two more, but Newt had a specific destination in mind. There was an audible grumble from the galley as the blonde boy led Rose to the very first bench.

There were four boys already seated there: Alby on one side by himself, and on the other, a cherubic kid with long, curling chestnut hair and an eager smile beside a much taller and older guy with a brighter complexion and curious brown eyes. Finally, Minho anchored the table quite literally, his sour face sinking even the cherub's levity.

"May as well start introductions here and work our way down," Newt said as his spindly legs weaved under the table. Whether he'd hazed her again by intentionally seating her across from Minho, Rose couldn't be sure, but there was something to that flick of Newt's eyes as she hesitated over the empty seat.

The blonde showed no sign of budging, and her rival showed no sign of noticing her at all, so Rose resigned herself to her fate. No sooner had she settled than someone stepped on her foot. She breathed heavily. Minho's mouth twitched.

"Did you sleep at all, newbie?" Alby asked when she was settled.

"I was more exhausted than I thought," Rose admitted.

"Yeah, well, running at max speed will drain anyone's battery," Alby scolded.

From the end of the table, Minho snorted but did not look up from the world's most interesting plank of wood. Rose squinted at the Asian boy. It rankled her that he was ignoring her when she had been the one who had been marched back to camp like that day's fresh catch.

"Don't mind Minho," Newt said as he rested his elbow on Rose's shoulder. "He's still jacked because you served him crow for dinner last night."

She offered a tight grin to the blonde and removed her unwanted attentions from the glum man across from her. Returning to the pudgy kid at the other end of the table, Rose mirrored his friendliness with her own.

"This is Chuck," Newt said. "There's not a better Slopper in the Glade, and I guess he's an all right shank, too."

"Hi, Rose," Chuck beamed. "I think you're really great."

The older boy next to him elbowed the kid, but Chuck hardly minded, and Rose offered a lopsided smile, unsure of what to do with the compliment.

"Try carrying her for a mile. She's not that great," Minho retorted from his metaphorical jail cell.

Rose's teeth gritted. "I told you I could walk."

"And I told you you'd lost that privilege," he snapped.

Their eyes met for the first time since the moment before he had hoisted her on his back, and Rose felt the air crackle. His half-moon eyes hardened in a silent challenge, and the animal she had detected yesterday lurking beneath his powerful muscles flexed its claws. She growled in reply.

"Do you always have to have the last say?" she demanded.

"Yes!" chorused the entire table, including Minho himself. Rose rolled her eyes.

"Alby," Minho continued unfazed, "try and forget for one second that the newbie is a girl. This little slinthead should be in the Slammer already."

"Already?" Chuck asked, his eyes ping-ponging between Alby and Minho.

"Oh yeah? Why's that?" the dark-skinned man inquired coolly before tearing into his last pancake.

"For starters, she's already tried to leave the Glade, and then there's this." Minho freed his button-up from the cinched waist of his pants and hiked it up over his stomach. His skin was just as bronzed beneath his shirt as it was outside it, but even the warm color couldn't conceal the hideous softball-sized bruise that marred otherwise impeccable moguls of abs.

"Oh, you've had worse from wrestling with bloody Gally," Newt groaned.

"Fine," Minho said, "you wanna enforce Rule Two for everyone but the chick, you go ahead, but you've never seen her in the Maze. I have. She's not some delicate flower, she's more dangerous than you can imagine."

The other boys quieted, and Minho stuffed his shirt back down, still angry but maybe feeling a bit vindicated. That was until Newt leaned toward Rose and whispered, "That was just an excuse to show you his abs."

The honey of Minho's cheeks warmed to marmalade, and he swiped his tray, standing so fast that his thighs slammed into the table, but he refused to show the smallest weakness, and without another word, he chucked his tray onto the buffet.

Still, no one remaining at the table seemed affronted—or even terribly surprised—save for Rose. It wasn't just Minho's stubbornness that had wormed its way under her skin, but his insinuation that the two of them somehow already knew each other.

The Maze. What was it? When had she been in it, but, more importantly, why had she been in it? From the looks the others had given at the mention of it, it wasn't a place any person should be, but evidently she had been. And that insufferable man had called her dangerous to boot. She didn't like him, but Rose couldn't deny that Minho was not someone easily intimidated. What had she done? What was she capable of doing?

The morning air didn't even have time to kiss Minho's empty seat before it was occupied by the boy with the potato nose from last night. His teeth shined even in the smoky light. "Don't pay that shuck-face any mind, Greenie. He's a hothead."

"Look who's talking, _Galileo_." Newt drawled, and the boy wrinkled his nose, which distorted it even more. Rose caught sight of his knuckles whitening, but after a very concerted effort on his part, Gally held his temper and even snatched a blueberry from her plate.

"So, Rose, huh? It's a good name for you," he garbled through cow-sized chomps.

"Why's that?" she asked.

Gally reached across the table and grabbed one spring of her curls, pulling it taut in front of her face. Even straightened, her hair was too short to be seen in clear focus, but, in the morning light, she noticed a distinct red hue, like embers dying in a fire. He let go, and the tendril bounced back into place as though it had never been disturbed. Gally waggled his eyebrows.

"Oh, red," Rose said with sincere surprise. Surprise at her own hair color—how frightening.

"And just as thorny," snarked Minho as he brushed past her with his elbow grazing her ribs, mimicking the same taunt she had used on him last night. So he had noticed...

"I thought you were leaving?" she snapped.

"I'll leave when I'm good and ready." He sniffed and lifted his nose high and, after a brief pause, started toward the door. Minho must have felt the bemused looks at his back, so he glanced over his shoulder to his accusers. "What are you shuck-faces looking at? I'm ready. It's not because some shuckin' she-bean told me to leave!"

His words caught in the pungent air and festered. Minho was nearly to the door when Rose's anger got the better of her.

"Next time I'll give you a matching bruise for your face!" she hollered after him, which, in retrospect, turned out to be a mistake as the whole cafeteria devolved into bedlam. Boys whooped and cheered and banged their fists on the tables, scattering silverware to the floor in a noisy waterfall. Unfortunately for Minho, over the din, no one could hear him slam the door, but Rose raised her chin high knowing she had finally had the last word.

"I can't take you anywhere," Newt shouted over the still-reeling crowd.

Though she had been in the Glade less than a day, Rose was already working to pick up patterns, and it hadn't taken long for her to notice that the deeper Alby's forehead creased, the closer he was to eruption, like an igniter plunging down on a detonator. One look at him, and she braced for impact.

With both hands on the table, Alby pushed the bench back and stood at his full height, and even though he was much shorter than many of the other young men, he managed to stand taller than all of them. "Don't you shanks have work to get to?" he boomed.

Most of the smiles faded into resigned pouts as small groups of boys filed up to the buffet and plopped their dishes in messy stacks. A few stopped by Rose's seat to pat her on her shoulder or welcome her before they started their day, but her seatmates remained.

The Kitchen was a disaster. Tableware was strewn everywhere, as were scraps of food and pools of liquid. There was hardly a square inch in the hall that didn't have some gunk clinging to it. The silence only intensified the level of disaster visited upon the hut.

"Great," Alby muttered as he surveyed the carnage before his eyes darted from Rose to the sullen man beside Chuck, "another troublemaker. You two should get along famously. Move it, Chuck. Time to do what you Sloppers do best, clean up after other people's messes."

No mistaking that pointed look their leader shot her.

Rose watched the youngest boy begin to sweep up rinds of fruit and globs of jam from the floor, and her heart ached. There was so much mess, and Rose couldn't avoid the knowledge that most of it was a direct result of her childish behavior.

"I'm sorry, Chuck," she said.

The crisp creases of his smile didn't waver. "For what? This klunk? This is what I do every day."

"I'll help," Rose insisted, scooting over, but Chuck dipped the handle of broom in front of her to bar her way.

"Not today. Enjoy yourself just a little bit longer because it all goes to klunk after this." Everything from the pink in his cheeks to the cheerful tilt of his head resonated sincerity. How had a sweet kid like this ended up here along with all these other hard-nosed tyrants?

Alby left the hall without another word, though Rose had a feeling he was saving up a few for her later. And then they were three.

Newt scooted over to give her more room, and as she moved, her focus shifted.

With the other distractions now out of her way, Rose could finally study the young man sitting across from her. She recognized him as one of the silhouettes trotting out of the giant door yesterday, though he had been dwarfed behind the imposing stride of Minho. This Glader looked fresher than the rest—a little less sweat on his collar, a little less sun etching his face. His sandy brown hair stuck out haphazardly, in desperate need of a trim, though Rose doubted nothing short of a strong gel or a close crop could tame it. A fine mist of moles peppered his symmetrical face down his neck and over his lean arms. Unlike everyone else in the Kitchen that morning, his pale lips hadn't moved, but his eyes, the color of maple syrup, had been busy assessing them all, especially her.

When she had first sat down, Rose had thought they were curious, the way darted around and collected every detail, but the more she stared into them, the more she realized they were analyzing. The practiced way they swept across other people and the room gave her the impression of a scientist investigating his environment. And the way they studied her made her wish her shirt was ten sizes larger so she had somewhere to hide. His gaze was exploratory. It was also triggering something behind the gray wall in her mind.

Before she even knew what she was doing, her left hand had crept forward, her pinky finger grazing the side of the stranger's. Out of the corner of her eye, Rose could see Newt shift, but her attention was focused on the contact between herself and the other Glader. It was like closing a circuit. Electricity flowed from him into her, and the current was strong.

Newt cleared his throat. "You two met before?"

"I don't think so," Rose said slowly.

The boy looked back to her and then to their hands. His finger stroked once along the length of her palm. Her heart hammered painfully as her memory worked to repress a connection Rose couldn't yet understand. Her chest tightened to the point that she felt like she couldn't breathe, and her vision darkened to pinpoints. Her brain was demanding that she stop whatever this madness was. She wasn't supposed to feel what she was feeling. She withdrew her hand as sharply as if she had thrust it into flames. All three of them heard her strangled gasp.

"You okay, Greenie?" Newt asked.

Rose nodded numbly as she massaged her hand. "Yeah, sorry."

The blonde narrowed his eyes, but he didn't press the matter. "This is Thomas. He's equal parts shuck-face and bravery."

"Mostly shuck-face," Chuck called out from the other side of the hall. Thomas smiled at the insult, which thankfully stole his attention away from Rose.

"Tommy was last month's Greenie, but now it feels like he's always been here, upsetting the apple cart. He's a Runner along with Minho, Omar, Greg, Renato, Archie, and Jonas."

Rose continued to flex and shake her left hand as she listened, but the vibrations persisted within her bones. It was the same horrible sensation she recalled from her dream when she had touched the wall that held something—everything—back from her.

In an effort to distract herself from the tingling, she asked, "Where do you run?"

Thomas's shoulders pulled back as his eyes glanced through one distant window to the ever-present unbreakable behemoth that encompassed them all. "The Maze."

It wasn't just the way Thomas said the words—heavy and full of dread—but his voice itself resonated within her.

"Sorry," Newt added with a shrug of his mouth, "I'm a bit behind on the most important part of our orientation. All this, everything we've built here, it's all in the center of a giant bloody maze."

"I'm sorry, what?" Rose gaped.

"Everything on the other side of those walls is labyrinth, always changing, adjusting to our efforts. The Doors open in the morning, and they close at night. If they close while you're in there, you don't come back." Newt paused, glanced at Thomas, and added with a snigger, "Usually."

"Why?"

"There are nightmares inside, Rose, bloody nightmares." Horror and trauma weighted Newt's words like ballast in a boat.

"Then why would anyone go inside?"

"That's why we have Rule Three. Not anyone, the Runners. They're the best of the best of us. They run from sun-up to sun-down and map every turn, every booby trap, looking for our way out. They're strong and fast and bloody brilliant at it, and they're all completely jacked in the head."

"That explains Minho," Rose quipped.

"Nobody's better at it than Minho," Newt replied quickly. "That's why he's the Keeper of the Runners. He's been Running for years on end, and he's still alive because he understands it. The Maze is not a game, Greenie. It's bad enough if you have some idea what to expect when you go in—believe me, we've lost plenty of good shanks to it—but barreling straight for it your first moment out of the Box is as good as a death sentence. It's why everyone worked so hard to stop you from going in, including Minho."

"But I've been in it before. That's what he said."

Newt shook his head firmly. "Not you. Another you. There are two of all of us, she-bean. There's you before the Glade and you after it. The moment you ride up in the Box, everything before ceases to matter."

"If that's true, why do all of you look at me like you don't trust me?"

Rose tried to look as strong and brilliant as she thought a Runner would, but both men studied her so gently—their lips slightly parted, their eyes soft, their brows both pinching up in the middle so curiously—that she abandoned her effort and instead looked out the window to the stone mystery that now mocked her.

Newt sighed. "Maybe it's not you we don't trust. Maybe it's why you're here."

"We're getting close, Rose," Thomas interjected, and she turned back to him. His face was eager and his eyes were brighter than ever and compelled her to lean closer. "We're coming to the end of the Maze. A couple more months, and we'll have a way out. We'll take everyone here and get them out."

He sounded so determined, but, more the point, he sounded like he wanted to convince _her_ of that. "And you think I'm here to distract you from that?"

Thomas and Newt exchanged a heavy look before Thomas answered, "We don't know. What we do know is we have to find a way out."

"And what's at the end?" she asked.

Thomas shrugged. "Don't know. Doesn't matter."

Both of Rose's palms slammed on the table, and even Chuck stopped in the middle of his cleaning duties. "Of course it does! What if it's worse than here?"

"Nothing is worse than here," Newt asserted softly.

"That's not true!" she shouted, and tears sprang to her eyes immediately. Hot beads of her body's betrayal spilled over her cheeks and splattered onto the splintery wood. Her hands rushed to her eyes to levy the flood, but they just smeared her vision and intensified her embarrassment. Rose couldn't stop them. She couldn't even explain why they came so furiously, but it didn't matter—something inside her knew something the other Gladers didn't, something even she still didn't. "It can always be worse. It can always be worse."

The door to the Kitchen swung open, and Minho stalked back in with annoyance already twisting his smooth features. "Thomas, what the shuckin' shuck are you still doing—"

His words arrested in his throat the moment his eyes fell on the girl sobbing uncontrollably at the table. Rose could barely make out his expression through the shimmering pools in her eyes, but whatever it was, it humiliated her. This was the last thing in the world she wanted to do in front of Minho, the Great Keeper of the Runners. She could feel her face burning, and she turned her head.

But it was too late. His voice cut the air, incisive and mortifying. "Why's the Greenie crying?"

Rose shoved back from the table and took off running, her body crashing into Minho on her way toward the door. She had to get out. She had to get away from them—from Minho and his criticism. None of it should have mattered, but it did.

Behind her, she heard Chuck shouting, "What did you do?"

"Me?" Minho protested. "I just got here. What did you slintheads do?"

Rose left any other conversation behind as she exploded back into the camp square. This time, the grounds were teeming with life. Boys with baskets of produce, buckets of water, or even crude axes slung over their shoulders bustled by as they followed Alby's first rule of the Glade. Every last one stared at her. She ran, but it wasn't fast enough to escape their volley of opinions.

"—told you she couldn't hack it here."

"Girls ain't made for this klunk."

"—the shuck were the Creators thinking?"

She looked out and saw the break of the meadow clear of almost everyone. What was more, she had a straight shot to the black chasm that had called to her yesterday. Its murky maw gaped at her, and while Rose no longer held the foolhardy notion that what lay beyond the Walls could cure what ailed her, she made a break for them anyway—she no longer had a voice in the matter. Her feet were magnetized to an invisible rail with only a single destination.

The wind crystallized the salt of her tears into sticky tracks that flaked as her skin twitched with each puff of breath. Behind her, she heard the growl of the panther, but today Rose was no rabbit. She felt her claws coming out. She heard her own growl rumbling in her chest. They were two great cats struggling for dominance over territory.

"Aw, come on, stop!" Minho yelled. It was a half-hearted demand at best.

When she was several feet short of the Maze, Rose dug in her heels, and Minho, who had nearly been upon her again, ground to a halt, almost wiping out beside her. Though he was barely panting from their run, he stooped over and put his hands on his thighs. "Holy shuck, you _can_ listen."

She shushed him.

In response, Minho slapped his thighs and straightened. "Fine, you want to go in there, you go ahead. None of these other slintheads know what I know about you anyway, that you can—"

Rose covered his mouth with her hand, barely registering his lips still fluttering across her fingers before he silenced. "I said 'shh'," she repeated. "Do you hear that?"

As he listened, his eyebrows slowly lowered until they pinched in the middle. His hand gripped her wrist and withdrew hers from his mouth. "What is that?" he said.

Though there was no roof over the Maze, the sun did not penetrate as sharply within, and shadows gathered like cobwebs in every corner. Wind funneled down the corridors without end, tousling Rose's hair and seeding a fresh crop of goosebumps along her skin. Underneath its steady guttural howl, something beckoned.

" _Rosalind_."

It was there, faint but there. She took a step closer.

" _Rosalind_."

Each syllable was stretched out like taffy. Another step.

" _Rosalind_."

She was nearly in the doorway now, and though the sound was still an undercurrent, it was clearer. Rose squinted. There was a mechanical tinge to the s's and something like a metallic click on the final letter.

"Rose!" Minho shouted, and he yanked her back. She hadn't realized he'd been holding her wrist until he jerked her sharply from the door, sending him tumbling on top of her.

Without a warning, the huge doors slammed shut with such ferocity that the whole Glade shook. Small cracks in the stone splintered outward from the matching set of jaws, not enough to damage the unit but enough to emphasize their tremendous bite strength. If she had taken just a half a step further…

Rose stared up wide-eyed at the man holding her. Minho's arms ringed her chest so tightly she feared she might bruise. His forehead sheltered in the nook of her collarbone, and his powerful thighs clamped around her hips.

"You all right, Greenbean?" he grunted against her skin.

She hardly knew, especially when his hot breath blossomed along her neck like that. Rose shifted underneath as she tried to prop herself up on her elbows. "Yeah, I think so."

Minho let go, and the temperature dropped fifty degrees. He sat back in the grass with his knees up high as though he was ready to take off in a moment's notice.

"What the hell was that?" he demanded.

"I don't—" But Rose was cut off by a dozen or more Glader reinforcements, who had rushed in from the fields.

"The shuck was that, Minho?" a Glader with a long face and droopy eyes asked from the edge of the ring.

The Keeper of the Runners ran a hand back through his black hair and stared at the shuttered doors. "I don't know. I've never seen that before. The Maze almost killed the she-bean. I mean, the shuckin' thing was calling her damn name and then nearly crushed her."

Gossip traveled around the circle of skittish boys like a playground game of telephone. The more they whispered about it, the realer it became. Rose had almost died.

She had almost died.

A moment later, Alby barged through the ribbon of spectators, practically sending a few of them flying. "What in the shucking shuck of all shucks was that klunk! I thought I told you to stay away from this damn thing, Greenie. What's Rule Three, damnit?" When Rose couldn't find the words quick enough to answer, Alby pressed on. "Everyone, what's Rule Three?"

"Never go outside the Glade, unless you're a Runner," they recited in perfect harmony.

"Never go outside the Glade, unless you're a Runner. And you ain't no Runner. You a wet-behind-the-ears, know-nothing Greenie, who, up until this morning, couldn't even remember her own shucking name. And here you are again, sitting on yo' ass in front of these shucking doors. Take the hint," he hissed.

"And you," Alby added, now turning his burning black eyes to Minho, "how you gonna let a Greenie get by you twice? Ain't you got any pride at all?"

"It's my fault," a heavily-accented voice announced from the other side of their audience. The boys parted to allow Newt a wide berth through. His wary eyes followed the length of the Doors from root to peak and then returned to Rose's crumpled form. He was worried, though whether it was because of the Doors or because of her, she didn't know. "I should have followed her. She was already upset, and we all do stupid things when we run scared."

"I wasn't—" But Newt halted Rose with a hand.

Alby's fists ground into his hips. "So you're telling me you want to spend a night in the Slammer because of her?"

Newt shook his head. "I don't _want_ to spend a night in there, but I should. Some lessons are better learned the hard way here."

Rose's cheeks burned from her own shame at the memory of Newt's cautionary words earlier. She had done nothing so far to engender such protection from anybody. She wasn't being clever or spirited or witty or any of the things that she had hoped would earn her friends here; she was being obstinate. The Gladers were taking her in and teaching her their ways, and she hadn't learned a single thing from the very people who'd been surviving here for years. The hard way, indeed.

Rose climbed to her feet and faced the well-deserved wrath of their leader. "You're right, Alby. I deserve whatever punishment you want to give me.

"And I'm sorry, everybody," she added, trying to give each man the eye contact he deserved. "I messed up. It's my fault, and I accept the consequences. Just don't punish Newt, he didn't do anything wrong."

Finally, Rose whirled around to find Minho still sprawled in the grass. She reached out her hand and, after a questionably long moment, he took it, and she pulled him to his feet. Rose hadn't had much time before to notice how much taller he was than she until she had to tilt her head back to reach his eyes. "Thank you, Minho, for saving me. Again. Sorry I almost got you shucking squashed."

There was a proud boom of laughter behind her at her use of their slang, but she didn't care. Minho's mouth quirked up in a lopsided smile—for her. It was all the forgiveness Rose needed.

Alby clamped a hand on her wiry tricep and tugged her back toward camp. "'Bout that trust, you know we starting back at zero, right?"

"I know," she sighed.

"Your speech helped. But I'm still locking your ass up."

"Don't forget to add a few extra hours for my bruise!" Minho called after them.

Alby's nose wrinkled. "You really should've added that matching one for his face."

* * *

 _A/N: Rose earns her name from Rosalind Franklin, a bad B who helped discover the structure of DNA (though she received significantly less notoriety for it). She also worked in virology near the end of her life. She died of ovarian cancer at 37, and her tombstone reads: "Her research and discoveries on viruses remain of lasting benefit to mankind." I thought she was a fitting namesake._


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

 _Suran (ft. Dean) – 1+1=0_

Despite its cold walls and shady home behind a bramble bush, under a mid-day sun, the Slammer baked Rose. It was a miserable cube made of stone, a shoddy-looking but surprisingly sturdy door, and a rusty lock as strong as diamonds. The mocking adornment of a rickety chair made her long for the comparatively homey bliss of her hut.

It was like a sauna inside. Except for the meager air that blew in through the window cut out in the door, there was no ventilation, and Rose had no choice but to face the fact that she desperately needed a shower. There was no telling how long it had been since she'd been clean, but judging by the ripe stink of her shirt, it might have been a few days longer than she had even been in the Glade.

No one had been by in hours to check on her, and Rose assumed it was either because they were still mad at her or they simply weren't allowed. Her stomach rumbled. Her breakfast had long since been exhausted and left her lamenting for that one extra blueberry Gally had swiped from her.

Maybe it was the heat or her hunger or a combination of the two, but the longer the hours scratched on, the crazier Rose felt. She paced the already well-worn tracks in the dirt until she had made a satisfactory trough. Finally, when there was nothing left to do but sulk, she sank down onto the lone chair in the room and slouched, staring hard at one of the walls.

The longer she stared, the more worried Rose was for her own sanity. The stone shifted and swirled. Murky shapes formed just out of focus, things she thought she recognized but couldn't quite place. Tunnels, maybe, and something glowing, like a computer monitor or a television. Amorphous shadows patrolled the scene in varying shades of beige and gray and black, always coming and going as though they had very specific destinations in mind. One of them waved something above its head, and new shadows raced into the vision until they formed a blob in front of a glowing screen, but it was impossible to see what they saw. There was no sound, as if the auxiliary jack in her brain had been unplugged.

Rose rapped the butt of her palm against her temple, trying to dislodge the strange images from her vision. "If these boys are trying to make me crazy, it's working," she grumbled. "And now I'm talking to myself. Terrific."

There was a knock at the door. Right on cue to drag her off to the looney bin.

Another knock. Whoever it was waited for her okay. How quaint. That ruled out both Alby and Minho.

"Come in," Rose said.

The ragged click of the lock's tumbler thundered off the walls. Ripe sunlight blasted the dank space, and she shielded her eyes with her arm at the flood of brilliance. Chuck's plump face waited smiling for her as her vision adjusted.

"Hi, Rose," he said softly. "How you holding up in here?"

"First, promise me you're a real person, and then I can answer."

Chuck nodded with a laugh for reassurance. "That's pretty good. Last time Gally was in here, we found him sniveling in a corner come morning. That was totally worth it."

Rose ran her hands over her face. "What time is it out there?"

"Same as it is in here," he joked.

"Doesn't feel like it. I feel like I've been in here for a week."

"Dinner time, which is why I'm here. Alby must really like you, he even gave me the key rather than making me shove this in through the window." Chuck deposited a tray laden with food along with a bucket of water on the floor. "I picked out the food for you myself. I hope you like it."

Even though her eyes had been playing tricks on her for hours, Rose thought she detected a darling pink on the boy's ample face. She glanced down to the tray and found a plate piled high with green beans, carrots and noodles covered in a chunky tomato sauce. Beside that was a charred chicken breast and one rather dense muffin. Chuck had even smuggled in a whole orange for her.

"It looks amazing, Chuck. Thank you," she beamed.

His flush deepened. "Should be enough water to last you through tonight. I tried to get you a blanket but couldn't find a spare. If I can't find one, I'll bring you mine."

"Please don't," Rose insisted. "I can handle one night in here, no matter what all those guys out there say."

Chuck leaned in the open door. "You'd be surprised," he said. "Most of them are actually kinda impressed you lasted that long without crying. And just ignore the rest of 'em acting like they're better than you. I can't even remember the last time a Greenie came up without totally breaking down—well, Thomas, but they broke the mold with that shank. I dunno, I think when you don't have a lot, some shanks try and take stuff from others so they can feel better about it. Don't let them take any of that from you."

Rose felt that familiar prick of tears again, but this time they weren't funneling up from some untapped trauma, they were coming from a well of gratitude. Before she could think better of it, she had closed the gap between Chuck and herself, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. She had a couple inches on Chuck, and she rubbed her cheek across his curls and closed her eyes. The smell of her dinner lingered around him, and under that, she could smell the pungent hint of his Slopper duties, but it was oddly comforting. He hesitated at first, but finally, he folded his hands around her waist and squeezed with surprising strength.

"I think this is my first hug," Chuck mumbled into her shirt. "It's really great."

"Mine, too," Rose laughed. "You're a really smart guy, Chuck, you know that? Thanks for making me feel so much better."

"Su-sure. Just don't let go yet, okay?"

"Okay," she said and nuzzled his head once more.

They hugged for another moment, drawing strength from one another in a perfect symbiosis. It was as pure a moment as Rose suspected she might get in the Glade, and she wasn't in a hurry to give it up, especially after her chilling brush with death that morning.

"Hurry it up, kid, Alby wants his key back before-"

Rose opened her eyes to find the Keeper of the Runners struck dumb at the sight of the two of them hugging in her jail cell. Minho's eyes widened and then, after a moment of studying her face in the boy's hair and Chuck's arms wrapped tightly around her waist, they narrowed.

"Oh, come on!" Minho exclaimed. "You bring her food and get a shucking hug. I save her life and get a knee to the stomach. How is this fair?"

Rose gave Chuck one final squeeze before she soothed his hair and let him go. She smoothed down her tank top and raised one brow. "Did you want a hug, Minho?"

"I-no! I'm just saying-"

"What are you saying?" Chuck asked with crossed arms.

Rose mimicked the kid's stance. "Yeah, what are you saying?"

"Forget it!" Minho shouted. "I should lock both of you shuck-faces in here."

"Hm," she added with a mischievous grin to her new partner in crime, "I wonder what we could get up to in here if we were both locked up."

Minho growled and stormed off.

After a moment, they uncrossed their arms, and though Rose was smiling at her little victory, Chuck sighed. "I better get back. I gotta finish the Kitchen before I get an earful from Fry. At least it's not as bad as breakfast."

Rose hung her head. "Yeah, I'm still sorry about that."

"Eh, that hug made it all worth it," Chuck said. He headed toward the door, his hand pausing on the handle. "I feel bad I have to leave you in here. Maybe once the guys get out of the Gathering, Alby will stop by."

"Gathering?"

"Yeah, the Keepers are meeting tonight. Probably talking about what happened at the Wall today. They don't let the rest of us in, so I don't know for sure, but they also don't call a Gathering unless something big is going on."

"Chuck?" Rose said, catching him with her words before he could close the door. "Do you think everything will be okay?"

"Hey, I got my first hug today. Sure feels like it." He gave her toothy grin and bid her goodnight.

The lock jangled and Chuck's footsteps receded, leaving Rose to her dinner and her thoughts. As she shoved inelegant handfuls of spaghetti into her mouth, she imagined the Gathering. She pictured a room crowded with bodies but more so with egos and loudmouths all asserting their opinions about what had happened this morning. They didn't know what she now understood.

The Maze wasn't trying to kill her. It was trying to draw her in.

Rose swallowed a bite of carrot and it went down hard, scratching her throat. She reached for the pail of water and froze. In a perfect spear of evening sun, she found herself in the still water.

She had hair like a wild blackberry bush, with bunches of curls piled on top of her head in a war for dominance, the losers satisfying themselves with poking out at the sides and bouncing at the top of her neck. While she had already learned that her hair was red, no one had mentioned the single tendril of brilliant white tumbling along the left side of her face like a waterfall over clay cliffs. She fingered it gently as she noticed a handful of other white hairs intermixed sporadically with the red.

Beyond her untamed mass of hair, Rose's body was a playground for recessive genes. Even though the incoming light wasn't strong enough to clarify her reflection as well as a mirror could, she could tell that she had blue eyes, and they were round and big-she thought maybe too big, bordering on nocturnal animal. They were framed by eyebrows of the same warm red with a high natural arch that gave her a perpetual look of wonder.

She stroked her left cheek, her thumb starting just below her eye and taking a long perusal of the pronounced bone underneath. She felt the occasional bump often followed by a shallow pit, most hidden by a heavy spray of gingerbread freckles. Her thumb halted its journey at her lips. They had what she thought was a pleasant flower to them, not as large as her eyes and much pinker than her fair skin.

Rose couldn't tell if she was beautiful because she had no frame of reference. She wanted to believe she was, but it was hard to say since she couldn't even decide if she liked the person she was becoming.

Her hands framed the bucket and she lifted it to her lips. Rose drank in the sight of herself, recommitting it to memory that hopefully this time she wouldn't be made to forget. The water was cool and more filling than the food. When she had had her fill, she put the bucket down, watching the ripples steady in their wooden confines. But as she stared, she noticed one ripple would not disappear until she realized it wasn't a ripple at all. It was a scar.

It started just below one ear and traversed the width of her neck to the other side. It was ragged and wide, like a tear in a stuffed animal that had only been stitched with a single scrap of leftover thread. In garish contrast to her ivory complexion, the skin that had refilled the chasm was opalescent pink. Rose brought her fingers to it and followed its track. It was deeper than she expected but just as rough. She stroked it with clinical precision, bidding the memories to return or maybe she was willing them away.

Rose had no idea how long she sat like that, cross-legged in front of her bucket, not staring anymore as the night had settled in but still stroking her scar.

With a high-pitched whine, the door skidded open at last. Alby stood there, rimmed by sallow waxing moonlight. He peered down at her.

"So, you ain't cracked up yet, huh?" His tone was teasing until he took note of the way her hand lightly strangled her throat. "Or did ya?"

"You didn't tell me about this," Rose said, wringing her scar one more time.

Alby didn't blink. "What'd you want me to say about it? 'You got this horribly disfiguring scar that you got no memory of, so you should definitely worry about it'?"

"Horribly disfiguring?" she repeated.

"Oh yeah," he continued. "It's so bad no once even noticed your face or your lips or your rack or your ass or, shuck it, even your _personality_."

It took Rose a moment to realize what Alby was doing, but as soon as she did, she playfully chucked her empty tray at him. He ducked and it glanced with a bang against the wall. It was dark, but she could still see the flash of his teeth.

"Do me a favor?" she growled. "Save the sarcasm for Minho."

Alby walked out the door and waited. "Well, get a move on, she-bean. Stop feelin' sorry for lookin' beautiful and follow me. We got klunk to talk about."

"I thought I had to stay the night?" Rose said as she dusted off the seat of her pants.

"Don't get me wrong. Soon as we all have our little discussion, I'm bringing yo' ass right back here. You ain't done your time yet, but for now, we need ya."

"Why?"

"Enough talk. You coming or not?"

Rose followed Alby down the short walk from the Slammer, treading carefully over the dozen boys sleeping pell-mell in the grass. Much of the Homestead was quiet as most of the boys passed out from their busy days, and Alby directed her along the back side past a corridor as long as a giraffe's neck. At the end of it swelled a rounded hall which emanated light.

Inside, eleven men already dotted the space, many of whom Rose recognized including Newt, Frypan, Gally, and Minho. Thomas was there, too, sitting beside Newt on an earthen bench, though she was pretty sure he was just a Runner and not a Keeper like the others. Yet somehow Rose sensed from her initial impression of him, or more specifically her connection with him, that he would have insisted on being there.

Gally leaned against a post, arms crossed and one foot propped up behind him, across from the pockmarked boy from the bonfire and the sleepy-eyed one from that morning. She caught sight of another young guy with gray hair already peppering his black, and she felt a sort of fondness for him now that she knew about her own white hair.

And then there was Minho. He stood not far from Newt, but this time, instead of ignoring her as he had tried to do at breakfast, he stared at her fervently. Rose felt the urge to hide her scar from such intense scrutiny, and she stood closer to Alby as they walked inside.

Grumbles accompanied her entry, and the boy with the sleepy eyes said through a yawn, "I feel like we just had one of these."

"Cuz we just did, ya bloody shank," Newt answered. "And wake up, would ya?"

Without another word, Newt rose from his seat and stepped to the center of the room. "Now that we're all here, maybe we can be more productive instead of continuing to argue like the moronic slintheads that we are."

"Perhaps it is best not to involve this one," said a boy with skin the color of mace and an accent just as spicy. "I can tell just by looking at her that she will be the reason more than half of you will end up in my Deadheads."

Rose scowled at her newest dissenter as she took the open seat beside Thomas. She shook out her shoulders and tried to make herself look as though she belonged there, but she didn't feel very convincing, especially when her hand kept betraying her to rub her scar.

"It's simple, Anil," answered Newt. "The buggin' Maze said her name. Why shouldn't she be involved?"

A few of the boys bantered about her presence at the Gathering, which gave Rose a couple minutes to reorient herself. She leaned toward Thomas and whispered, "What's going on?"

Were her eyes playing tricks on her or was he grinning? "We're talking about someone other than me for a change."

She crinkled her nose at Thomas' useless answer and wished Chuck were by her side to offer support. Instead, Newt joined the pair on the bench, skootching Rose over so that their hips touched.

"If you think after a month dealing with the likes of bloody Tommy that I'm going to let another troublemaker sit with him unchaperoned, you got another thing coming." Newt's words were rough but his tone was surprisingly affectionate.

"Slim it," Alby finally interjected into the circular debates, and Rose snapped to full attention. "It's clear now that whether we're ready or not for these changes, they are coming, and they're gonna keep coming, which means we gotta come up with an answer to 'em."

Another boy Rose hadn't seen before, stouter than Chuck and maybe only a year or two older, barked from the other side of the room with a voice as rotund as he was. "I say stick the she-bean and Thomas into the Maze overnight and let the Grievers solve the problem for us."

"Dummy," Gally said, clocking the kid on the head with his knuckles, "Thomas already spent a night in there and came back out. Much as I like the idea, that slinthead's a cockroach that keeps comin' back. Why would this time be any different?"

The boy rubbed his scalp with a meaty hand and glowered. "No one can live in there forever. And we already know that thing wants to kill her. It shucking said as much today."

"Excuse me, but you don't know what the hell you're talking about."

Every pair of eyes shifted to the redhead sitting rigid, her hands now balled into fists on her thighs.

"That right, she-bean?" the rotund boy challenged, but Rose wasn't backing down.

"That's right. That thing out there, that Maze," she said, "it wants me in there."

"How do you figure that when it nearly made a pancake out of ya?" replied Frypan.

Rose stood, not realizing her feet were carrying her to the center of the room. "What would be the point? I just got here. None of you like me, you don't even trust me. If the Maze wanted to squash someone like that, it wouldn't have started with the person nobody cares about. I don't know why we're here, but I know whoever put us here did it for a very specific purpose. That Maze is trying to get my attention."

"Well, it sure has a funny way of doing it," Minho mumbled.

"We could say the same for you, lover boy," whistled Gally as he mimicked pulling up his shirt over his stomach. Minho scooped up a handful of dirt from the floor and lobbed it at him. It scattered with a soft puff across Gally's chest.

The guy with the graying hair stared at her. "If it's true that the Maze wants you in there like you say, Greenie, then why'd the Doors stay shut all day? No one could get in."

Rose's mouth shrugged. "I don't know, not for sure, but maybe it knows I'm not ready."

"Better shut all day than open," Newt volunteered. "If that's the case, maybe they'll stay shut until they know you're ready."

Minho stuffed his hands in his pockets. "You're not ever going to be ready because I'm not letting you back in the Maze, and that's final."

"I've never even been in it!" Rose argued.

"Says you! Maybe you're right. Maybe it does want you back in there for some reason, but I'm not one for givin' the shuckin' shuck-faced Creators jack. I know what you can do in there even if 'new Greenie you' doesn't. I'm not endangering my Runners any more than I have to just to make that thing deadlier with you in it."

"Are we looking at the same girl?" joked the rotund kid. "What's a scrawny chick gonna do in the Maze, 'specially with them Grievers eager to munch on her chicken wings?"

Rose opened her mouth to defend herself, but Minho beat her to the punch. "A Slopper like you has no idea, Ender. If you haven't learned anything else by now, you should know that what you see in the Glade and what you get are two shuckin' totally different things."

"Good that," Alby said, stepping behind Rose. "Maybe it's better if we keep the Greenie as far from it as possible. If it wants you, then you best believe the Creators are up to no shucking good."

Rose was an albatross now, she could see that, the emblem of everything bad that had ever happened in the Glade. She stood there shaking. So far, her past had been taken from her along with her freedom, and now she couldn't even take control of her future.

"This is garbage," Rose snarled. "Why did you even pull me out of my cell if you were just going to make all these decisions without me?"

"That's why we're a Council," Alby said. "We make the decisions that will protect all of us as long as we can."

"I thought you wanted to get out of here? That anything was better than this place?" Her eyes bored into Newt and Thomas as she spoke. "Doesn't it feel like you're going backwards? And do you honestly believe that things won't keep changing even if you take me out of the equation? I don't know how many of you are already in here or how many there have been, but I've got to believe there are more, will be more, until you give these Creators what they want."

Sweat gathered at her hairline and at the back of her neck. Her scar chafed as her throat tightened. Rose spun in a circle, searching out the support she desperately needed so she didn't feel so unhinged, but she found only uneasy faces. Even Newt refused to look at her.

Only Thomas seemed brave enough to face her. His rich eyes ran over Rose's face, questing as she had seen them do to other things in this place. Perhaps it was because, as a fellow newcomer, he had been in the same boat, or maybe he just saw sense where these other lifers could no longer, but she willed him to speak up. She begged over and over again with her eyes, "Please, say something!" But he didn't, and Rose's rage deepened. Thomas had demanded his seat at the table, and it had been granted. Rose would not be so lucky.

"Seriously, none of you think this is total insanity?" Silence permeated the room as wary eyes slid from one person to the next. With nothing left, Rose took the only thing she could back from them—herself. She huffed and threw up her hands. "I'd rather be staring at absolute blackness right now than looking at any of you! Take me back to the Slammer."

She marched toward the door but was barred by a long muscular arm. Alby stared down at her. "We're not finished here, Greenbean."

"Well I am. You have your little boys' night out and tell me tomorrow what life choices you've made for me then. I'm sure I'll give your opinions the same level of consideration you've given mine."

"Let her leave," said Newt. "There's nothing more that needs to be said tonight."

Rose didn't look back at any of the scoundrels who had tossed her overboard. She would have felt more betrayed if she had really considered any of them friends. But with a sudden pang, she realized she had.

From the warmth of Newt's kindness thus far, she had thought they were forming a bond, but now she could see that had all been part of her perfunctory Glader orientation. Alby was a weathervane, and though Rose had glimpsed flashes of consideration, he would always face the way the winds blew trouble into the Glade. And Minho was just Minho. They would likely never see eye-to-eye, but the way he talked about the other Rose, the Before Rose, unnerved her, like she was unsalvageable, like he couldn't stand the sight of her. It stung more than it should.

But she felt Thomas' abandonment most keenly. The moment their hands had touched, she felt secrets shift beneath the earth. Their connection ran deep, even if she didn't know what it was, and she knew he had felt it too. She hadn't imagined that stroke of her hand at breakfast. And yet he hadn't said a word at the Gathering, save for a joke. Come to think of it, most of them had made some kind of snarky comment. Was that what she was? Some punchline?

Rose stewed all the way back to the Slammer. She didn't say a word to Alby, and he returned the favor. She let herself into the cube and he locked the door behind her, plunging her into darkness as rich as manure and just as pungent.

She no longer cared about what unmentionables might have stained the dirt from prisoners past. She felt like she belonged to it now. Rose curled up on her side and stared, though it was so dark she couldn't tell if her eyes were open or if she just imagined they were. Somewhere beyond the Walls, monsters growled.

Eventually she dreamed.

* * *

It had taken her less time to cross the ocean this time. The hum and the whistle were back, same song, and this time Rose joined them eagerly. At the foot of her impossible wall again, she pulled her spoon from her waistband and prepared to excavate.

As her shoes leveled at the edge and the white waves crashed with curling foam, the hands reappeared. All three sets came at once this time, slicing the shallows like shark fins. They clawed for Rose, resolute in their hunger for her. Fear gripped her heart before the hands could grip her feet, and her own hand froze, the spoon trembling at the sight of them. She knew what to do, knew how to send them away, if only she could convince herself to do it. But she was so alone in this vast wasteland, so alone.

She thought of the song that had carried her here, melancholy and hopeful and defiant all at the same time, and she realized she was all of those things, too, but afraid wasn't one of them. Her elbow loosened, freshly greased with determination, and she dug straight into the wall. She chucked the gray wad into the seas, and, for now, it sent the fingers skittering across the surface like water bugs.

This time, Rose was more careful in her excavation. She could not touch the wall with anything but the spoon unless she wanted a teeth-jarring shock, so progress was agonizingly slow. She whittled and she scooped and she scraped. It felt like hours, but it could have been minutes.

Whereas her first pearl had been earned easily, all of her digging tonight had only unearthed two more from a cavity the size of a head of cabbage. She used the spoon to carefully roll them out into her waiting hand, where, after a careful examination, she deposited each in her pocket next to the third she had previously collected. Such little things, such priceless treasures.

* * *

The robust rust of daybreak sifted in past the canopy and through the window to warm the jail cell like oil in a pan. Somewhere outside a rooster crowed. Rose opened her eyes and stretched, savoring her renewed strength.

She should have been licking her wounds right now, should have been balking at the injustice of this new world, and she probably still would in due time. But right now, she was a stronger Rose, more powerful than before, and no one out there knew it yet. Her secrets gave her immunity and invigorated her veins. She would be untouchable today because, shuck it, she was Rose, lover of crisp apple cider and proud former owner to a pet mouse named Gus.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

 _Jessi - Gucci_

That morning, Rose waited patiently in the chair, legs crossed and hands folded neatly in her lap. After what seemed like hours, outside she heard the march announcing her release, and she could tell by the irregular footsteps which of her wardens would be pardoning her.

Newt waited on the other side of the door with a sheepish grin that didn't quite reach his brown eyes. Rose did not return it. He offered a good morning to which she nodded curtly. At that gentle face framed by golden locks, her initial inclination was to cave, to share her latest discoveries about herself with Newt as eagerly as she had yesterday. It panged all the sharper when she realized she couldn't, not if she wanted to take back some control. Her secrets were her only currency here. After last night, it was abundantly clear Newt wouldn't care anyway.

Silently, Rose crossed the floor of the Slammer and reemerged on the other side of it, a free woman who wasn't yet free.

The green outside was exactly as she had left it, though today it felt a bit more muted. Chatter drifted up from the square along with chicken clucks, pig snorts, and the aroma of bacon.

"How'd you sleep?" Newt asked at last.

"Fine."

Silence.

"You hungry?" he continued.

"Yes."

More silence. The scuffle of their shoes on the bone-dry dirt was the only sound between them until they reached the back corner of the Homestead.

Before Rose could step one foot into the public square, Newt grabbed her shoulder and turned her around to face him. Ragged tree limbs bit into her spine as he cornered her under the shade of the overhang. Her eyes were wide, his were pleading.

"I'm sorry about last night. Things got a little out of hand."

"They did," she replied evenly despite the thundering of her heart.

Newt's eyes scanned her face, looking for some sort of reaction, but after his silence last night, Rose wouldn't let him have one. She thought of Chuck and his advice: _Don't let them take any of that from you._ She wouldn't, not anymore.

She turned her head away, but Newt wasn't going without a fight. She felt the tips of his fingers give the gentlest of squeezes to her shoulder, and Rose had to close her eyes to keep from looking back. If she did, she would fold.

"I never meant to make you feel like I was abandoning you. I bloody regret it. But there are just too many variables too soon. We want to keep everyone safe. We want to keep you safe, Rose."

Her name caught on the wind and tattered like a white flag.

Rose steeled herself and turned back. Newt was staring at her, at her neck but, surprisingly, not at her scar.

"You broke Rule Number Two," she said, her words guiding his eyes back to hers. "It hurt… a lot. So you should know that I'm not ready to forgive you just yet, but at least this puts us on an even playing field."

Newt raised a brow. "How d'you figure?"

"Looks like we'll all have to earn each other's trust back."

At the very least, the two of them had come to some sort of a tenuous understanding. Newt's apology meant a lot, but his support would have meant more. They would have to reconcile that, but they had time-time in spades-and Rose was relieved to know he cared. As for the rest of the slintheads from last night's Gathering, they were still firmly in the doghouse.

With a nod, Newt removed his hand, and the two of them joined the lazy lines of boys funneling into the Kitchen. Inside, rowdy talk dulled to a low buzz at the sight of her. Surrounded by unwitting Gladers, Rose entertained questions with one- or two-word answers but ignored Frypan altogether as he ladled a spoonful of eggs onto her plate.

Newt sat at the head table populated with yesterday's crew, leaving an empty seat beside him again. Rose took one look at it and headed toward the back of the hall.

There were fewer available seats today as word of her connection to the Maze had spread, but hormones had always overruled teenage boys' fear, and Rose found a seat at a table with four eager young men. And best of all, not a Keeper in sight.

Rose wasn't in the mood for small talk, but they had been kind enough to let her sit with them, and, from the glares she received from the head table, chatting with these boys, however insignificantly, clearly rankled the Glader Powers That Be. So Rose made nice with three Builders and a Bricknick, listening to them with sincere interest when they explained their work and fading out when they devolved into complaints about Gally and his leadership skills. They didn't ask much about her, which was fine considering she hardly knew anything about herself, and the stuff she did know, she was tired of talking about. They did not share laughs or trade barbs. They ate breakfast and smiled and superficially flirted. It was just what she needed.

When Alby stood, the rest of the Kitchen followed suit, including Rose, who did her best to disappear into the crush of boys. But her red hair made it hopeless, and before she could escape, she got her marching orders.

"Yo, Greenie."

Her shoulders sagged. "Yes?"

"I need to see you."

Rose trudged to the head of the cafeteria. Alby stood at his table leaning on one leg he had propped up on the bench. Newt, Chuck, Thomas, and Minho remained, but she only spared a glance for Newt and a smile for Chuck.

"Time to start earning your keep," Alby said. He offered no apology, but Rose didn't honestly expect one, and if she were truly honest with herself, if he had offered one, she might have lost a little respect for the stern leader that he was. "We gonna assign you a duty today."

"Okay," she said with a shrug of one shoulder.

"What? No arguments?"

"No. Were you expecting one?"

Alby paused. "Well, yeah."

"Then you get none."

Chuck's lips formed a neat O while Minho's fork paused on the way to his mouth, and though his head was bowed, Rose could see Thomas had raised both eyebrows. For his part, Alby just stared at her.

She pressed forward. "I know I'm not allowed to make much in the way of decisions here, but if it's all the same to you, I'd like to start as a Slopper."

This time, each boy blatantly gaped at her. Alby offered one incredulous laugh. "A shucking Slopper? Nobody asks to be a Slopper."

"What's the difference as long as I'm not Running?"

Alby glanced from Rose's crossed arms and jutting chin to a portly boy behind them who had puffed up enough to occupy an entire bench to himself. Whereas the hall had largely cleared out, only a handful of Sloppers remained to clean up, with the Keeper still feeding his face. "You know Ender is the Keeper."

"What's your point?"

"He don't like you."

"Right now I don't like any of you much either, so if it's all the same, I'd like the job. And for the record, I may be a girl, but I can handle myself. Somebody once told me not to take anybody's klunk here, and I don't intend to start now."

Alby ran his tongue over his teeth as he realized he'd been that somebody. "Way we usually run things is to have the Greenie have a go at everything, but for now…" He trailed off and gave a half-nod of consent.

Rose smiled at Chuck and whispered just loud enough for the others to hear, "Don't worry, I still like you. Come and show me what I need to do."

Chuck grabbed his dishes and escorted her over to Ender. The Keeper scowled at her immediately. "What do you want?" he grumbled through teeth yellowed with chunks of cornbread.

"I'm a Slopper now," Rose answered simply.

"Go make some other shank's life miserable. I ain't interested in your girl problems."

Rose leaned over, both hands on the table beside him, until her face was level with his. The smell of grease and pond water was inescapable, but she refused to blanch.

"Listen, Ender," she hissed through thin lips, "I'm not going anywhere-I can't-which means I'm not just everyone's problem, I'm your problem. So, let me make a suggestion: take my help or I'll take your sanity."

Ender froze, a nugget of cornbread tumbling out of his craw onto his plate before he wiped his mouth on his forearm. He cleared his throat and glared at Chuck. "You keep her outta my sight at all times, ya hear? First time she doesn't do what I say, she's gone. Good that?"

Good enough for Rose. She had won. Granted, it was a paltry victory, but in the wake of her embarrassing defeat at the Gathering, she reveled in it. The head table was still watching. Even better.

While Chuck worked to clear the tables, Rose swept up litter from under them. It was an easy, if dusty, job that had a rather pleasant mind-numbing quality to it. Before she realized it, she was humming to herself, the same song that she had heard in her dreams. She thought she was being quiet enough, even skipping the whistle at the end so she wouldn't disturb the others, but when she looked up, she noticed she was the only one moving.

The boys from the head table had finished their private conference (which had stretched suspiciously longer than yesterday's), and now wore matching stunned expressions. Even the other Sloppers had stopped mid-duties to listen. But it was Minho's face that struck Rose most of all. Despite being tables away, she could see his breathing had quickened and every muscle in his body had tensed.

"What?" she asked, shattering whatever spell they'd been under.

In a flash, Minho tossed his plate on the buffet and jogged-actually jogged-out of the Kitchen.

"What was that about?" she asked Chuck.

"I dunno. I mean, we're not used to music around here-nobody can really remember any songs-but even for Minho that was pretty weird."

"That Greenie got time for singing, she got time for more working," barked Ender from his table, and they all dove back into their tasks, yet Rose couldn't sweep away the ghostly look to Minho's eyes.

Shortly thereafter, Alby, Newt, and Thomas got up. Only Newt gave a small wave goodbye; Thomas didn't even glance her way.

With nothing but work left for her to focus on, Rose followed Chuck around like an apprentice. He showed her all of the quickest ways to get through their work and offered tips to avoid getting too messy. "When you clean the bowls, don't take too many at one time. My first week here, I dumped half a gallon of grease on me, and my clothes stunk so bad, the guys called me Upchuck until the next Greenie rolled through. Lucky for me, that was Thomas, and no one thinks too much about me anymore."

Table scraps were collected and sorted to be eaten by the ever-ravenous Slopper boys, used for compost, or saved for the animals. Dishes were washed in a scummy basin and organized the way Frypan liked.

With the Kitchen clean, Rose thought she might have a lull in her day, but Ender had other plans. "Chuckie, I hear the bathrooms need a good cleaning after a round of shuck chicken last night. Make sure the Greenie gets in there good and deep."

Chuck hung his head and sighed. "Sorry, Rose."

"It's okay. Just show me where Ender keeps his toothbrush, if he even uses one."

They shared a laugh as they walked across the camp to the communal bathroom and showers. From the superlative stink radiating from the walls, the gory task pressed on them. Somehow Rose's tiny bucket and scrub brush felt impossibly inferior in the wake of such destruction. Living with forty boys had many downfalls, but this had to be one of the worst.

Chuck grabbed her wrist and squeezed. "You don't have to go in there yet. Let me scout it out first."

Rose found his hand and interlaced her fingers with his. "You know, in my book, Chuck, you're more valiant than all the Runners put together. But you don't have to do that. If I can't handle a little of this shit, I won't be able to handle the rest that comes out of everyone's mouths."

They laughed again and walked in. Rose immediately tugged the neckline of her shirt over her nose and tucked it behind her ears. It was like a little bandage on an amputation. To distract herself, she asked Chuck to tell her his favorite Glader stories, which he happily obliged.

Rose learned that Alby had not been the first leader in the Glade; that Winston, the pock-marked boy she kept seeing, was allergic to strawberries-which they'd all learned the hard way one very dramatic breakfast; that sometimes Anil talked in his sleep in another language no one else recognized; and that Thomas and Minho had both spent a night in the Maze to save Alby's life.

At Chuck's last revelation, Rose felt a little guilty at assuming Thomas had just been handed his place in the Council Hall. He had fought for it after all, harder than she had suspected, and she realized that if she expected equal treatment, she would have to continue to do the same.

But then she remembered that he also hadn't said one word in her defense last night either, and somebody as reckless as he was should have, at the very least, extended her some of the same courtesy. She shooed away her guilt and dropped her scrub brush emphatically into her bucket.

"Done," Rose declared.

"You're one tough shank," the kid said. "You even did yours faster and better than mine."

"I had a great teacher."

Chuck looked at her with such fondness that, for a moment, Rose thought he might hug her or maybe even steal a kiss, but he just nodded before washing his hands. She wondered how the other boys treated him. Chuck was the kind of good-natured kid that others might like to terrorize.

"Could you do me a favor?" Rose asked.

"Anything."

"Could you watch the door while I take a few minutes to clean myself up?"

Rose longed for a shower, to wash away the disappointments of yesterday and look as new as she was starting to feel, but she imagined that would have to wait, preferably until all the boys had gone to bed. She would have to settle for a quick scrub down in the sink.

Chuck took a post on the other side of the bathroom door as Rose removed her shirt and ran it under cool water and used it to wipe her face. Swirling the damp fabric over her skin felt almost as wonderful as her first hug had, and it was just as comforting. Her skin prickled at the sensation, and she could feel color rise under it.

She reached for a brittle bar of soap and lathered along her forearms up to her armpits, finally making her way up to her collarbone and neck. Rose breathed deeply, and while the soap had next to no smell, it did neutralize the stink of her morning work. She massaged the suds into her scar, wishing she could wash the whole thing away. A trail of bubbles tickled in between her breasts and reminded her how sweaty she was under her bra.

Outside, Rose caught the hint of a ruckus followed by a grouchy, "Slim it, half-pint," and then silence.

Which was precisely the moment Gally burst into the bathroom.

Rose was shirtless and elbow deep under her bra, dripping with pitiful suds and frozen in shock. Gally's face burned as his eyes catalogued every bubble. He didn't move.

"Get out, asshole!" she screamed, enunciating each word with rage.

It must have reverberated throughout the Glade. Rose wondered if even the Runners had heard her in the Maze. Gally disappeared in a flash of crimson, his back stiff but his head hanging.

Rose grabbed her shirt and mopped the soap from her body as fast as she could manage. Without even a word to a concerned Chuck, she took off on a brisk hike down the first trail she caught into the woods. She had no idea where she was going, but it didn't matter. She couldn't get lost in a place with no exits anyway.

Embarrassment drilled each foot fall into the uneven clay. Gally had now seen more of herself than Rose had. Gally! The second loudest loudmouth here. How much of what he saw would make it back to the others, and how could she ever take a shower now knowing how easily the others could breeze by her teddy bear sentry?

"Keeper of the Builders," she scoffed. "Yeah right, more like Keeper of the Perverts."

Rose stomped until her thighs began to burn and her shirt began to dry, and only then did she realize that the path had changed. Tree roots blistered the earth and rocks peppered the dust. Underbrush closed in on both sides until she couldn't take a step without leafy fingers tickling her ankles. Her skin pimpled at the memory of the family of hands from her dreams, and she picked up her pace again.

Eventually, Rose emerged in an emerald canopy studded with swags of vines. The light was softer here, like a green shade pulled over a dim bulb. Slanted, mossy crosses grew amongst the underbrush, the only thing to distinguish them from the flora being sloppy drips of paint with names like George, Stephen, and Hank. After many months baking in the shade, the wood had pitted and weathered into the color of bleached bone.

Two strange stone outcroppings teetered up alongside the crosses baring the more recent gouges of chiseled edges and the jagged trenches of names: Nick and Ben. The straggly grass that survived the shadows had only recently begun to grow on the ominous brown plots of turned earth. The graves fanned out around Rose in a wide berth, more numerous than she could possibly have imagined, and yet, they felt like they were closing in on her.

Someone crouched in the shadows behind the slanted trapezoid that read "Ben", and his silhouette slowly unfurled when he heard her strangled cry of surprise.

"Hello, little Greenie," said Anil in his peppery accent. "I see you have at last found my Deadheads."

"What is this place?"

"It is exactly what you think it is."

Rose's eyes swept from cross to stone as a chill traveled up her spine. "What happened to all these boys?"

Anil did not blink. "The same thing that will happen to us all: they died."

For a moment, Rose was back in the Council Hall with Anil across from her. He hadn't looked at her then or she might have noticed the way tingles walked up her arms like spiders when his cinnamon eyes penetrated her. She remembered the accusation he had leveled at her: that because of her, he would be tending to more of these crude memorials.

"And you buried them?"

"When we have bodies to bury." His hand rested on the top of Hank's cross.

In an effort to put some space between herself and the strange man, Rose paced the perimeter of the graveyard, noting piles of picked weeds beside some the graves. She stooped down to examine George's cross more closely. Her fingers traced a blocky "g" as she said, "Do you make these yourself?"

"I do." When she didn't respond, with a lilt of poetry in his voice, Anil added, "What is hard to bear is sweet to remember."

"So, when you see their names, you remember the good times?" Rose stared at George's name, wondering what fond stories someone might have about him-she bet Chuck had some.

Suddenly, Anil appeared above her, his brown forearms folded on the cross and his black bearded chin resting on them. "There are no good times here, little Greenie, but if we do not remember these boys, who will?"

He stood back up and smiled with a hint of mystery. "I am glad you have come, for I have something to show you."

Anil walked toward the back of the graveyard and up a mild incline that overlooked it. He waited for her at the top, not moving a muscle until she followed.

Rose wringed her hands. It wasn't just the graveyard, or the man who was taking care of it, that made her skin crawl. A sense of foreboding built in her chest with every step she took. At the top of the little hill, she ventured a look back. From above, the Deadheads looked like moorings in a swamp, battered and mossy and completely haphazard. Beyond them, through a gap in the trees, she could see the Wall-always the Wall-and the rest of the camp. It was so close and yet felt miles away.

"This way," Anil redirected.

Only a few steps further, and she saw it. A wild rose bush. It had only a few flowers, and they were small with sparse petals, rather unpretty, but it was a tenacious and thorny thing nonetheless, surviving in dirt so baked by the sun that it had become hard as rock.

Anil stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Rose as both studied the bush. "Nothing like this grows anywhere else in the Glade. I do not know how long it has been here, but it has been here at least a few months. Do you know what that means?"

Rose shook her head.

"It means you were always supposed to be here. You may understand me now when I worry about your presence, yes?"

 _Yes_. Rose didn't say it, but she thought it. The flower was a message written for her as clearly as if in blood, but what it was saying, she couldn't yet translate. Her stomach knotted.

Anil turned his back on the flowers but kept his sharp profile on hers. Rose could feel his intense stare as though he were scouting around under her skin. He didn't scare her, but she was scared of what he might find.

"I saw how you looked at me last night, like I was an enemy. But I am not. No one here is. The enemy is out there." His chin pointed toward the Maze, perhaps beyond it. "If it makes you feel any better, little Greenie, I think you should be allowed into the Maze. You are right about it. It wants you in there, for what purpose, I cannot know."

"Why didn't you say anything to them?" Rose said, incredulous.

"I may be the Keeper of the Baggers, but that does not mean much-there are only four of us, and the others do not like us much because of what we must do. And anyway, it would not have mattered to the Council."

"It would have mattered to me," she protested.

Anil gave one brief chuckle through closed lips as he stared down at his Deadheads. "Is that so? Jackson always says I am better with the dead than I am with the living."

They hiked back down the hill, where Anil kneeled at the next cross, someone named Linus, and began wrestling ivy roots from its side. From over his shoulder, he said, "I will see you tonight, little Greenie. May we meet under better terms."

Rose walked back toward the Homestead, her head still reeling. In the wake of the discovery of the rose bush, Gally's intrusion had been all but forgotten. It was Rose alone in a tangle of brambles. She felt like its thorns had staked into her, and she was dragging its mystery behind her like a ball and chain.

Had the bush always been there, intended for her from the very beginning of the Glade's existence, or was it put there recently? Either scenario was terrifying. In one, her fate had always been decided, which also meant that no matter what happened to the other Gladers, she would come to serve a purpose of her own. In the other, someone, either a traitor amongst them or a yet unseen foe, had smuggled it in and planted it just to let her know he was watching.

Rose's head swam with the possibilities until she felt near drowning. She hadn't even noticed she had made it back to camp until she ran face-first into a back as firm as brick and mortar. Alby spun around and narrowed his eyes. "I been lookin' for ya, she-bean. You weren't with Chuck."

"I was," she replied. "I just needed a breather."

"If you have time for wanderin', you have time to come with me."

Rose sighed but followed him. She realized about halfway there that they were headed for her room. At this rate, she had never expected to see it again with how long and miserable her day had been.

"I saw the bathrooms," Alby said, shattering the silence beneath the trees. For a moment, Rose tensed, thinking he was going to bring up what happened with Gally. "Chuck told me that you got elbow-deep in that klunk, did most of the work. They looked real good, maybe better than the day we came up."

"Thanks," she replied, a bit in shock at the compliment.

"Which is why I'm ready to give you this. You earned it. If yesterday had gone differently, I might have given it to you then, but let's forget that."

Rose raised an eyebrow but kept silent.

The hut looked smaller in the daylight without the mystique of a galaxy blossoming overhead. The door was wide open, offering a peek at her sagging hammock and not much of anything else. This time there was no blonde boy waiting beside it, just a cluster of lonely stumps blemishing a well-beaten track of dirt.

"Inside," Alby directed.

Just inside the door frame sat a small crate that had obviously been rifled through and then haphazardly repacked when its contents were deemed worthless to the rest of the Gladers. There was a new toothbrush, some shampoo ( _No conditioner-savages_ ), a small pile of clothes, socks, and undergarments, a razor, and a box of tampons.

"How fucking thoughtful," she muttered to herself.

From her crouch, Rose looked up at Alby, and he answered her unasked question. "Came up with you. Greenies always get a box of the basics, but I like to wait and see if they contribute. No work, no box."

She plucked a rolled ball of clothing from the crate and shook it out. There was something extraordinarily invasive about it, like someone had rifled through Before Rose's laundry or measured her while she was passed out to figure out her correct size-scratch that. The two outfits in the box were not just a size smaller than the tank top she currently wore, they were half the fabric, too.

"Is this some kind of joke?" Rose asked as she raised a juniper green crop-top to the light. It would barely cover her chest to say nothing of showing her stomach.

Alby eyed the top suspiciously as if he sensed the inherent danger within. "Wouldn't put it past those shuckin' Creators."

The other shirt, if Rose could call it that, wasn't much better. While it covered her stomach, the deep apricot V would leave little else to the imagination. Hell, from a distance, it wouldn't even look like she was wearing a shirt.

As for pants, there was one pair of black leggings that would be comfortable enough to work in but impossible to wear with either shirt without putting every curve of her lower half on display, as well as a pair of very short lycra shorts that would be completely useless if she ever convinced the Council to let her into the Maze.

And for one final thumb of a nose at her, the Creators had seen fit to include a sundress in wispy white eyelet lace. An actual dress-as though Rose would have any occasion to wear such a thing in a place like this. At the very least, it was more conservative. It was sleeveless but the neckline was chaste, and it was fitted through the bodice though the skirt had a pretty swish to it. Of all the choices, she could probably make it work the best. She could pair it with the leggings and clean the bathrooms in it-thumb her nose right back at them.

Rose couldn't even bring herself to look at what they had provided in the way of underwear.

First, the rose bush and now the world's most impractical wardrobe. Rose was starting to wonder if the Creators had put her here for an actual purpose or if it was just to mock her.

She dropped the clothes back into the crate and looked at Alby. "What did the other Greenies get when they came up?"

"Same kind of klunk mostly."

"No tuxedos or short shorts though?"

"Shuck no," Alby laughed.

Rose sat in silence for a moment, wallowing in what she considered was well-deserved self-pity, until Alby grew uneasy. "Ya know, sometimes we request things from the Box and we get 'em. We could ask for something else for you."

"Somehow I doubt I'll get it," she said sourly.

"We won't let something like that happen to you here."

His words pulsed. _Something like that_. They both knew what he meant.

"It's not just about that."

Rose thought about confessing everything, her insecurities, her suspicions about her arrival, even contemplated showing him the flowers Anil had found, but if the Gathering had been any judge which way the wind was blowing, it would only give the Council another reason to write her off again. And that was the real root of her anger. "Forget it," she added.

Alby's body filled the door frame as he appraised her with his trademark crossed arms, but for once, he didn't look angry. After a long moment, he said, "Tonight at dusk we're having another bonfire. Last one didn't go so well, and you weren't really in a right mind to enjoy it, and then, ya know, there was the jail time."

"I don't think I'm really in a right mind now," Rose sighed as she sat on the edge of her hammock. After a day spent cleaning, scrubbing toilets, and picking up after dozens of filthy fellow teenagers, not to mention spirit-worn from her discovery of the Deadheads, she was exhausted. She flopped back into her hammock, one leg dangling over the edge.

From behind her, she heard Alby's gravelly baritone: "It's a tradition for the Greenbeans. Attendance is mandatory."

He closed the door, and that was that. At least her new underwear would make great kindling.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

 _Sik-K ft. Crush – Party (Shut Down)_

Rose arrived at the bonfire unaccompanied. It was remarkable in the respect that, with the exception of her rage walk through the woods, it was the first time she'd been trusted without an escort.

Beyond the walls, things clicked and squealed as the world reset. Something snarled, at least, Rose likened it to a snarl because she had never heard anything like it that she could remember.

It was just past dusk, and the fire was the only illumination for the whole of the Glade. The boys were bathed in golden sap, brilliant smiles splitting their faces, and if they hardened to amber right now, explorers who found them in a thousand years might never comprehend the horrid ordeal they lived every day. In this one moment, Rose was in awe of how resilient such young men could be.

As she drew closer to the fire, Chuck found her. "Hey, where'd you go today?"

Rose looked at him apologetically. "Sorry, I had to blow off some steam. I should have said something."

"Naw, I screwed up. But I really did tell Gally not to go in! He just never listens to me."

She put a hand on Chuck's shoulder. "Sounds like he doesn't listen to anyone."

"Oh, I think he heard you today," said Newt as he appeared behind them. "The whole buggin' Glade did."

Every one of Rose's muscles tensed. That loudmouth Gally, what had he told the others? Her voice trembled a bit as she asked, "How much did they hear?"

"'Get out, asshole!'" howled Frypan from beside them in a pitch-perfect imitation of Rose's voice. Laughter chorused off the flames equally as loud as she had been this morning. Gally was nowhere to be found.

Rose was grateful that the fire concealed her flush.

"How do you like your bonfire?" Newt asked as his own smile wound down.

"It's better than the first one I saw."

"What? Didn't like the view from Minho's shoulder?" teased the permanently droopy-eyed boy she now knew as Zart, the Keeper of the Track-hoes.

Her pucker was back. She tried to ignore the jibe.

"Give it a few more minutes," Newt said. "Things will start to lighten up when Frypan's special saucy-sauce makes the rounds."

She didn't know what that meant, and she wasn't sure she wanted to.

Rose studied the lively scene around her. The fire had stoked a joy in the boys that she hadn't really seen before. Pairs squared off for playful grapples as spectators whooped and heckled beside them. Others recounted their conquests of the day with cheerful boasts and toothy grins. Some stuffed their faces, some guzzled jugs of water or another golden liquid that made every one of them wince. A handful of boys crouched in the dirt over hand-carved pebbles covered in dots, half clapping and the other half booing with every toss. So much revelry in the middle of a labyrinthine prison.

"This might be the one thing I'll miss if we ever get out of here." Newt startled Rose from her reverie, not just with his voice but with the words themselves.

"You don't think we'll get out?"

"I think it's been two years and we're still here." It wasn't really an answer, and both of them knew it.

The fire roared, and somewhere on the other side of it, they heard a round of applause.

Newt turned squarely to face her. Half of his face shone bright as the moon while the other half remained plunged in darkness. The natural gold of his hair danced in the light of the fire, and it reminded Rose of a picture of a sprite she had seen in a children's book she couldn't quite recall. For the first time for any of the men, she spared a moment for how handsome he was. Newt was all strong lines with soft edges, from the angle of his chin to the curve of his neck. The corners of his lips tipped up invitingly as he leaned a bit closer. Maybe it was just the heat coming from the blaze beside them, but every inch of Rose's skinned burned.

"Mind doing me a favor?" he said just loud enough for her to hear. "Talk to Tommy, would ya? He's been a right prat all day, and I can't take the sulking anymore."

Rose hesitated. Her gaze reluctantly shifted from the silky rhythm of Newt's lips to the sullen heap of a man alone on a log just at the edge of the shadows. Of everyone who had been at yesterday's Gathering, it was Thomas that Rose wanted to see the least. The others had wounded her pride and stalled her momentum, but for some reason, it felt like Thomas had flat-out betrayed her.

"I'll think about it," she said, her eyes never wavering from the lonely silhouette.

"Well, I've done all I can," said Newt cheerily. "I just wish we had some bloody music other than Renato's dreadful thumping on that pot."

Rose quirked an eyebrow. "Why's that?"

He smiled. "I'd ask you to dance, of course."

She tugged on her tank top to stave off the uneasy feeling like it had caught on fire. "Slim it," she barked, and Newt laughed.

Rose stood between Newt and Chuck as she watched some nameless, shirtless boys grasp each other's shoulders, as though they were two deer locking antlers, and try and push one another out of a circle in the dirt. "Are you boys shirtless like this often?"

"Not quite," Newt scoffed as he watched Rose's reaction more than the spectacle itself. "This feels more like a mating ritual than anything."

"Gross," she said, but Rose couldn't deny the baser part of her that enjoyed the way the shades of wine and garnet and butterscotch dramatized the flex of every muscle as the boys grappled. Newt quirked a brow.

"You havin' a good time, Greenie?"

Alby materialized from the darkness as he joined their little party. He had changed his shirt to a dark brown or black-it was hard to tell-but it was definitely less stained than the other one he'd been in since she'd arrived. He looked a little taller and much less stern.

"I don't hate it," she replied.

And that was that. His apology and her acceptance of it. Rose could see it now, why Alby had demanded she come to the bonfire. The party, the change of clothes, the cool attitude-it was all for her.

"Bout shuckin' time," Alby said and, without so much as a glance, walked away. Rose smiled.

She circled the party with Chuck as her escort. First, they watched the boys playing their game of dice, and Chuck lost his next lunch ration to a Bricknick when his bet crapped out on the first roll. Next, they watched as Winston and a scrappy young Track-hoe named Cat tussled in the dirt for no other reason than to see who was better. A quick kick to the back of Winston's knee and the Slicer went down in a heap, with Cat taking a victory lap, both fists in the air. He winked at Rose as he made his round.

She spied Anil beside his fellow Bagger, Jackson, a gangly boy with gaunt cheeks, white lips, and a ghostly smile. They leaned against the Homestead wall, more like decorations than guests. Anil nodded once to her. "Good evening, little Greenie," was all he said. Somehow, she knew from those words, from the twitch at the inside corner of his eyes, that their secret rose bush was still a secret.

By the time she and Chuck had made it halfway around the square, Rose's amusement had started to wear thin. She was having a good time, but the hunched shadow on the log at the edge of her vision was not. She had tried ignoring Thomas as she watched everyone else letting go of the misery of their existence, but he was a rain cloud on her otherwise cloudless night.

Rose joined him on the bench, mimicking his slumped posture and distant gaze. Despite the fire, his brown eyes were frosted. Even his skin was paler, reflecting less of the life that danced across everyone else's. He looked drained.

Rose waited for Thomas to acknowledge her-and she kept waiting. When it was clear he wasn't going to budge, she said, "Hey."

It was her turn for the silent treatment, and as Rose basted in his rejection, she realized just how effective the technique was. She felt helpless and angry and completely at Thomas' mercy. No wonder the other boys had folded so quickly.

Rose inhaled slowly as she built her courage, smelling smoke and sweat and browned skin. "You know, Newt said you're being a 'right prat,' and now that I'm here, I have to agree with him. You're not just giving me the cold shoulder, Thomas, you're giving it to everyone. I'm not sure why you're mad at _me_ after last night, but whatever the reason is, you could at least have the decency to be nice to your friends."

Suddenly, his hand enveloped hers where it rested on the bench. Thomas curled his fingers under Rose's palm and pressed into her possessively. The tingle she had felt yesterday was nothing compared to the vibrations that traveled up her arm. Rose's whole body trembled, like a tuning fork that had been struck to precisely the same pitch as his.

Thomas leaned in, his eyes level with hers. The frost had thawed, replaced with warm honey. "You feel that, right?"

Rose nodded.

"I felt the same thing at breakfast the other day when you touched my hand, and I haven't been able to think about anything else since. That's weird, isn't it?"

"I think so," was all she could manage.

Neither said anything more as they channeled all of their attention into the connection at their fingertips.

"Have you felt that with anybody else?" There was a hint of something behind his words that Rose could not place.

"No," she replied. Because she hadn't.

"What do you think this means?" Thomas asked, raising her hand in his.

"I don't know, Thomas."

He swiped his thumb once over her wrist before finding her gaze. "Me either, but I think it means something."

It wasn't just her arm that was trembling now but her heart, too. They had barely had any dialogue since their first meeting and no alone time until this moment, but somehow none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was Thomas' touch.

"Hey."

The arrogant clip of Gally's voice cut through the moment like a chainsaw, but Thomas did not drop Rose's hand. Gally glanced from it to Rose and back to Thomas. His eyes narrowed.

"Rose, can I talk to you for a second?"

" 'Get out, asshole!' " someone nearby joked, and the Keeper of the Builders burned hotter than the bonfire.

"Please," Gally hissed.

Rose looked to Thomas, whose eyes begged her not to go, but the desperation in Gally's voice plucked at the one sympathy string she had for the man, and she shook her hand loose from Thomas' grasp. "Only because you said my name."

With one last glance back at Thomas, Rose faded into the night, and with her went the strange tingles he had created. Gally led her to an empty bench far from the prying eyes of the other boys. Out here, on the edge of camp, was like being on an outer planet, quiet and dark, orbiting the light of the fire just bright enough to outline their faces but not enough to warm their skin. Chills quickly set in under the ever-present wound of the mottled galaxy.

Rose took a seat, and only then did Gally sit, choosing a spot as far away from her as possible. He rubbed the bump on his broad nose and sniffed.

"About today," he began, keeping his eyes on anything other than Rose, "I didn't know you were in the bathroom. I'm used to going where I want here, doing what I want. I'm not used to having girls in my Glade."

"You don't say," she deadpanned.

"You get used to doing things a certain way you don't even think about 'em anymore."

Rose narrowed her eyes. "Like bulldozing over poor Chuck?"

"All us shanks do. It's the way it is. If you're going to do _that_ -" Gally emphasized the last word like it was an expletive.

"You mean wash myself?"

He sighed and rolled his eyes. "-you should at least get somebody strong to watch the door, not Shucking Chuck."

"Or you could just listen when somebody tells you to stop."

Gally grunted. He stuttered in a way Rose would have never pictured of somebody so consumed by his own greatness. "What I'm saying is, if you need someone nobody will mess with, you can ask me."

Rose crossed her arms. "Why? So you can take another peek and tell everybody about it again?"

"I didn't," he mumbled. "I wouldn't."

"You didn't tell anyone?"

"I didn't, I swear. Honest." It was the first time Gally had ventured to look her in the eyes, and it was also the first time he had surprised her.

Rose had expected the first thing he would do was march back to the Builders and embellish every little attribute to his men, and from there his tale of supposed conquest would make its way through the Glade. Hell, she was so sure of it that Rose had been ready to roast him on a spit tonight the moment she saw him, but now that she came to think of it, not one boy had said a word to her about it. They made fun of Gally, not her.

"But if that's true, what did you tell them? Everybody heard me, no way they wouldn't have asked you about it."

One of his hands reached up to scratch his ear. "I told 'em I just liked watching a girl clean."

Rose would have slapped him if she didn't feel like kissing him so much. She knew this might be the only mercy she might ever see out of the man, but Gally had spared her from humiliation to instead suffer his own. That was worth something.

After an awkward silence, Rose nodded. "Okay, good. So, are you going to say sorry or not?"

Gally wrinkled his nose at the thought, which only squashed the bulge on his bridge like modeling clay. "Huh? All right, fine. Just this once, and then we never talk about this klunk again. Sorry for seeing you almost naked."

"What."

In this vacuum of space, the word boomed. Gally and Rose craned their heads around to find Minho. One fist was tightly balled at his side while the other squeezed the neck of a jar of water.

Gally raised his hands in surrender. "Listen, Minho, it wasn't like I was trying-"

"You shuck-faced king of all slintheads," the Runner began taking several powerful steps forward from the curtain of shadows.

"It was an accident, Minho," Rose asserted, "and he said he was sorry."

Her words were enough to halt Minho's stride but not enough to uncoil his white knuckles. He pointed one stiff finger at the Builder and growled, "If you ever do something like that again, you'll be Griever food, ya hear me?"

"Good that, Minho," Gally replied and slinked back to the others.

As they watched Gally's back fade into the boisterous crowd, Minho gritted his teeth. "Was it really an accident?"

"Yeah, it was," Rose replied. "What are you doing out here, Minho?"

"Whatever I want," he retorted. He took a seat on the bench beside her, much closer than the one Gally had occupied.

"I guess that's what you usually do."

He snorted. "Damn right it was until you came gallivanting around like you own the place. Now I have to watch you, Greenie, round the clock. Keep you from getting into trouble."

Rose turned to him and shrugged her mouth. "Yeah, and how's that working out for you?"

"You're already getting into more trouble than I ever thought possible. No one's safe around you."

Rose frowned. How was it this man could elicit such violent feelings from her with his every word? Since their first meeting, Minho had done nothing but complain about her and make backhanded allusions to things about her that he flat-out refused to explain. It was infuriating on a level as otherworldly as the galaxy overhead. "If I'm such a burden, you could just stop."

"What? And miss another chance to parade you around like a trophy? Shuck that. The only way for you to get rid of me is to outrun me, and ain't nobody here who can do that."

"I was close."

"But I won," Minho taunted as he scooted a seat nearer to her. "I always win."

A challenge. Rose had learned enough of herself by now to know she liked a challenge.

"Fine, rematch. Here back to the bonfire. Fastest time wins bragging rights," she proposed.

It wasn't just the fact that she wanted to prove something to Minho; Rose wanted an excuse not to be alone with him out here in the darkness. He was sitting so close already, her body had forgotten the tingles Thomas gave her in favor of some kind of itchy prickle, like she was alive with anticipation.

"No way. You're a sprinter. Short distance favors you, but you already knew that, didn't you?" His eyes were shrewd, with just a hint of a smirk. "Long as you know I'll always get you in the long run. Besides, I'm having too much fun watching you squirm. Do I bother you, she-bean?"

"Your face does," she spat. He laughed. Rose hadn't really heard Minho laugh since she'd arrived in the Glade. He was usually so serious around her, even guarded, for reasons she hadn't yet unearthed. Still, it was an oddly affecting sound. "You might as well head back to the fire. I'm not talking to you anyway."

"Coulda fooled me. Why? Because I won't let you into a Maze that wants to shucking kill you?"

"It doesn't-"

"Yeah, yeah, you go on and think that, Greenbean. You might be new here and the only girl, but if you think that thing-" He motioned toward the Wall and took a quick swig of water. "-gives a klunk about any of that, then you're in for a rude awakening."

"I thought you didn't want me in there because I'm dangerous?"

Minho leaned forward until only a fist might separate their faces-Rose readied one of hers just in case. He smelled a bit like sugar and corn bread and something else tangy and pungent that she couldn't place. Shadows deepened the mysteries in his eyes that now searched her own, and she wondered what he might find in hers.

"You _are_ dangerous," he replied. But then he sat back and took another drink, his eyes no less appraising.

Silence hung in the air. Minho seemed to be considering something as his thumb absently traced the rim of his jar. "You know, I saw you and Thomas holding hands. Always knew that shank works fast."

Rose scowled. "It's not like that."

With one shrug of a shoulder, he added, "Not that it has anything to do with me, because I don't care what you do as long as you're not in my Maze, but you might want to save that stuff for your room."

"You're right, it has nothing to do with you, so do me a favor, and shut up."

"Just trying to be helpful."

"Why don't you help yourself to a seat on the other side of the Glade?" she snapped.

Minho scooted his hips closer yet again, so close this time that their thighs nearly touched. Another challenge. "Naw, I like it right here. Your anger keeps me warmer than any fire."

"I don't know how anyone here stands you, let alone made you a Keeper of anything."

"This helps," he said, passing her the water.

Without thinking, Rose took a deep draft from the jar and immediately choked on the concoction as molten lava seared her throat. If it was supposed to taste like anything other than magma, it failed miserably.

"That wasn't water!" she spluttered as she folded over at the hips.

Satisfied, Minho grabbed the jar back from her, and he took another sip. "Like me, you get used to it."

Rose glared at him, her eyes pricked with a single tear from her choking. "Why would I want to get used to that-or you?"

Minho laughed again, shorter this time but still just as affecting. "Give it a minute."

As they sat, Rose waited for some magical transformation to occur. While no enchanted rainbows or leprechauns appeared, the burning in her throat had moved down to her stomach and sprouted out from there, unwinding tendrils of warmth through her arms and legs before sending a shoot upwards that blossomed into a fuzzy firework in her head. She cupped one flushed cheek in her hand as she said dreamily, "What is it?"

"Not bad, right? Little of this klunk, and things get a lot easier to bear."

"Even you," she marveled.

Rose glanced back at Minho, who offered her a close-lipped smile and a raise of his brows. She squinted and leaned forward. Two crescent-shaped dimples framed his mouth, and as she studied them, a word bobbed in the now-foggy seas in the front of her brain: cute. She cursed to herself when she realized whatever this concoction was, it was making her think insane things.

"Careful, Greenie. One more drink, and you may even want to kiss me."

Minho offered her the jar, but this time Rose had an answer to his latest challenge. She snatched it from him and turned it swiftly on its side, its crystalline contents sloshing into the grass at her feet. She placed the empty jar on the log beside her, and with a look as triumphant as the one Minho had made the day he caught her, Rose took off running toward the bonfire.

"Hey, that's cheating!" she heard from behind her, followed by some very sloppy footsteps.

Rose pushed herself as fast as she could go toward the others, but this time she knew she couldn't be caught. By the time she reached the Homestead, her lungs were ablaze as much as her stomach. She placed both hands on the back of her head, and, despite wanting to double-over, she forced herself to stand tall as she waited for her adversary.

Finally, Minho emerged from the blackness, chest heaving and lips gasping. "Not fair," he wheezed. "You know how much of that sauce I just drank."

"Then it should make it that much easier for you to bear the loss," she crowed.

Applause erupted around them accompanied by peals of laughter. Rose felt an arm encircle her shoulder, and she looked over to find Zart with a smile that made his sagging eyes look like they were ready to weep from laughter.

"Well done, Greenie," Newt commended as he joined the ever-growing cluster of boys. "You bested the Keeper of the Runners at his own game."

"She knew I wasn't ready," Minho complained as he hunched over and braced his hands against his thighs.

"A cheap win is still a win," declared Rose, and she bent down to match Minho's eye level, "and it's just as sweet."

Minho growled, but she caught the sliver of crescent at the corner of his mouth, and she knew she wouldn't take too much flack for her little stunt tomorrow.

A tremendous screech issued from the other side of the Wall. It was some sort of horrific amalgamation of a hawk's cry, a lion's roar, and squealing metal. Gooseflesh bristled on every square inch of Rose's skin, and her body shivered. Zart's arm tightened around her shoulder as he flinched.

"Looks like it's time to wrap it up, shanks," Alby said as he pierced their circle. "Let's go, put it out and pack it in. Tomorrow's no different than today."

Though there was a communal sigh, it seemed deflated by the stark reminder of the dangerous world in which they lived.

"I just want one day off," Chuck said, stooping down to pick up litter around the circle.

"You can have all the days off you want when we get the shuck out of here," replied Alby as he tossed a bucket of water into the flames as did a few other boys.

With the fire out, a chill pervaded Rose's bones as much as the acrid smoke pervaded her nose. Despite being surrounded by forty other people, in the dark, the place felt very lonely, like she imagined it felt like when her parents would have turned out her light at bedtime.

At the thought of parents she couldn't remember, Rose's chill deepened. She wished she could sleep in the Homestead with everyone else, but the rules were different for her. The Gladers might have put her in her own hut out of consideration for her privacy, but, while it was probably imagined, Rose felt like a silent dare had been issued, a playground taunt that she couldn't last one night in a haunted house. And anyway, she knew that if she ever wanted someone to trust her in the Maze, they had to believe she was capable of surviving in there-monsters or not.

Rose found Alby straightening a bench that had been knocked over at some point by teenage roughhousing, and she smiled at him. "I had fun tonight," she admitted.

He nodded. "Let me find Newt to walk back with you."

"I know the way by now," she protested as she grabbed a torch from the perimeter of the square.

"You sure?"

She returned his nod.

"Could I stay with you, Rose?" Chuck asked. There was nothing but perfect innocence in that voice, and Rose wanted to grab the soft pink of his jowls and pull him to her.

"Keep dreaming, Shucking Chuck," Winston said as he breezed by them, a fresh cut at his scalp painting his forehead chocolate brown.

Rose looked to Alby. "I don't mind. It's only Chuck."

"Out of the question," their leader responded and punctuated his answer with a few firm slaps of his hands on his pants as he wiped them clean.

With a pout and a half-hearted shrug, Chuck said, "Worth a try."

Newt sidled up behind Chuck and rubbed his fist on the boy's head. "Come on, ya wee shank, fun's over." He nodded to Rose and added, "I expect a dance next time."

"I expect actual music next time."

He smiled, and as he brushed past her, he whispered, "Thanks for talking to Tommy."

At the mention of Thomas, Rose's hand tingled again, and she busied it with the duties of carrying her torch. She said goodnight to the other boys, saved a victorious sneer for the continuously bitter Minho, and headed down the path behind the Homestead. Inside the great house, she could hear rafters creaking and bare feet padding over the floor. Through the glaring cracks in the boards, Rose caught glimpses of boys taking off or putting on new shirts and even a few slipping out of their pants, and she turned away. Maybe she was the Keeper of the Perverts after all.

The woods grew wilder with each step, and her ears perked up accordingly. Other than the farm animals she had seen and the Grievers she had heard, Rose hadn't noticed any other wildlife, only the occasional bird circling overhead. The lack of Mother Nature was almost more unnerving than an abundance of it. Then she remembered the flash of red eyes she had thought she had caught her first night. Rose hadn't ventured to ask about it because she hadn't actually believed it to be real at the time, what with everything she had gone through, but then again…

She glanced up to a branch overhead and saw it clear as day. Piercing crimson light blinded her so that she couldn't see anything of the creature that made it. Her hunches arched and her hair bristled. There was something sinister about the angry red glow, something unnatural, and it penetrated Rose's heart. She rubbed her eyes and sprinted forward to her hut, stumbling as her vision strained to normalize.

Rose plunged headlong into her hut and closed the door. There was no way to lock it, but it would have been pointless anyway with glassless window holes on either side. She lit her candle and snuffed out the torch, though she had wished she could have trusted the stronger flame in her wooden fort. Her eyes flicked from window to window and back to the door more times than she could count, and eventually, the pattern wore her down like a hypnotist's watch until she sagged haphazardly in her hammock, her candle burning to a nub to spite Mother Newt.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

 _LOONA – Singing in the Rain_

 _A/N: Sorry about the day-late posting. The in-laws live in the country and have no internet, so I had to wait until we got back from Thanksgiving to post. To make amends for the delay, I will post another chapter tomorrow!_

Before she knew it, Rose had slipped into a seamless rhythm. Every day she would wake up with the sun and join the troops for breakfast. Then it was off to Slopper duties, which were just as odious as she had expected. Ender never let up on her, although he had yet to formally acknowledge her presence. All of Rose's directives came through Chuck or one of her fellow Sloppers, and they were widely considered the most demeaning, like scrubbing toilets or washing communal laundry (she drew the line at the boys' underwear though). But Rose did them without complaint—she would not break for the likes of Ender.

Between lunch and dinner duties, and when no one else was looking, Rose would make her way into the woods and practice conditioning. She found a small but steep hill abutting the South Wall perfect for cardio that she would run as she practiced agility and strengthened her lung capacity. She wouldn't quit until her chest burned and her throat seized with coughs, and with each passing day, that length increased.

To build muscle, Rose used a fallen branch as a weight. Only after she had gained a fair bit of upper body strength did she take her training to new heights. The vines in the grove were thick and abundant, and they were perfect for Rose to practice chin-ups and climbing. At first, she was embarrassingly bad, but after three week's practice, she could climb to the top.

The boys might not be ready to let her into the Maze yet, but when they were, she would be ready for it.

With all her hard work, showering had become an inescapable necessity, so Rose had entrusted Gally with guarding the door to the bathroom for her. The shank had been right—nobody ever tried to come in with him outside and neither did he.

The Glade always seemed to be busiest, and by extension, the loudest, at dinner. The Runners were back, which meant Minho and Thomas were back, loud and argumentative as ever. There were lots of laughs and more than a few useless fights, but it was everybody's favorite time of day because—for a few short hours at least—the hard work was over and they could be teenagers again.

Only a week into her residence, Alby and Newt had invited Rose to live in the Homestead with the rest of them, but Rose had grown to like having her own place. What had started out as a divider between the other Gladers and her was now her favorite part of the Glade because, most importantly, it offered her the time she needed with Thomas without attracting questions.

Most days after dinner, Thomas would show up at her hut with a soft smile and high expectations. The two of them would sit in the fading light on neighboring stumps and join hands in the hopes that they could glean some memory from the intense connection their touch generated. It never worked, and Thomas would leave just before dark with warm skin and disappointed hopes.

Rose's nights were spent tunneling through the wall in her mind. It was always the same. The humming, the water, the wall, the hands. Rose learned early on that if anything other than the spoon touched the wall, the gray matter would regenerate, so each scoop had to be precise, especially when her shallow crater became a narrow cavern. She'd scoop away at the wall for hours until her hand ached. Some mornings she would wake with her fingers cramped like a spider crushed underfoot.

From the wall, Rose learned she hated mustard and the color black. She loved the smell of pine, but the scent of cabbage made her nauseous. She had ridden a bicycle and broken her nose once when she fell off it. Sometimes she would find some sliver of mental detritus, purposeless wedges of squiggles and sharp angles that made no sense. On those days, Rose would scratch them into the dirt in the corner of her room in the hopes that they might piece together into something someday.

Rose was inundated with random fragments, and yet she had nothing of her family. While she treasured each pearl, what she wanted most still eluded her. She wondered if her family was still out there. Had their memories been wiped, too? If the Gladers ever reached the end of the Maze, would her family be waiting at the exit to welcome her home?

When she woke on the morning heralding her fourth week in the Glade, Rose was already glistening in a sheen of sweat, not just from the exertion in her dream but from the tremendous humidity layered on top of roasting heat. If the waist of her pants was saturated, then her legs were already basted. Even her hammock was an oppressive sarcophagus from which she couldn't wait to emerge. She eyed the crate in the corner of her room with steely dread. No getting around it any longer.

With a groan, Rose tugged on the lycra shorts. Evidently, the Glade had made her practical to a fault because, in the end, she couldn't rationalize shredding the only scraps of fabric she'd been given. She might have been grateful today if she weren't so embarrassed. Rose recalled thinking the shorts would be a size too small when she got them, but after weeks of training, they were snug but surprisingly breathable. That was where the practicality ended. To say nothing of the fact that they left very little to the imagination, they didn't have a single pocket and they were an overly feminine shade of petal pink with a thin white border around the leg holes. Rose thought about adding her dress over top of them, but she was trying even harder to avoid that piece—something about it felt… flirty.

If she was going to wear these shorts, she was going to have to own it or the boys would devour her whole. Rose rolled her shoulders a few times and punched the air in front of her, trying to draw both strength and confidence to go out into the Glade. She took a few deep breaths and cracked her knuckles. _Game on, Creators._

But the moment Rose stepped out her door, her pep talk wilted under the sweltering heat and the huge eyes of the Glade's unofficial mother. Newt froze mid-step on the path when she strode through her door. Her cheeks burned from more than just the heat, and Rose nearly bolted back inside.

"Bloody hell," he managed.

Rose squeezed her eyes shut and screwed up her face in embarrassment. "Yeah, this was a bad idea. I think I'd rather die of heat exhaustion."

Newt scratched the back of his head in a show of apology, but even he couldn't manage to look away from the little swath of pink just covering to the top of her thighs. "Sorry, I guess I'm just used to you wearing the same thing every day."

"I don't suppose you give the same reaction to Gally when he changes his pants," she quipped.

"Yeah, well," he fumbled for a moment, "he's bloody Gally. And please don't make me think of him in pink shorts."

"Can we please just never speak of this again? It's only for today, and I think if you act like it's no big deal, maybe others will, too."

"I think you greatly overestimate my position here," he said, his eyes still firmly fixed on her woefully pale mid-thigh.

Rose sighed and remembered her oath to own it. The Creators were probably watching somehow right now, laughing at her, maybe even taking bets on how quickly she would fold under the pressure. She wouldn't let them get the best of her, not this time.

 _I'm in control, I'm in control, I'm in control._ She kept repeating it until she almost believed it.

To distract from the painful pre-existing distraction, Rose shared her latest dream revelation with Newt, as she had taken to doing most mornings. As it were, he was often the first person she saw every day—sometimes already waiting outside her hut, other times waiting around the entrance to the Homestead.

"I play the fiddle—well, played," Rose emphasized. "Maybe. Okay, I had one image of myself holding a fiddle like I knew how to play it, but I have no idea how old I was or if I can even still play."

This seemed to jar Newt's attention back to her—well, to her face. "The fiddle?" He said it dreamily, like he was trying to flip through the dictionary in his mind. "Like the violin?"

"Yeah, I mean, I didn't remember actually hearing any music with it, but I know that when I picture that memory of holding it, I felt strong, like it has a connection with my family. Just thinking about it makes me feel…" Rose paused as she felt the surge of excitement at the wood and strings beneath her fingers, and it was as powerful now as when she had first discovered it in her dream. "…happy."

Newt looked away, the twitch of a grin flirting with the corner of his mouth. "Glad to hear it. You're going to need to hold on to some of that today."

The way he said it sounded rather ominous, and Rose worried what Alby might have in store for her. But Newt's smile alleviated most of her worries, and he added, "Oh, reason I came by. We're putting together requests for the Box this week. Have any?"

"How about a giant bathrobe?" she scowled, glancing down, not that Newt needed any redirection to her naked legs.

"I'll add it to the list," he joked.

As they approached the Kitchen, Rose's feet froze. She could already see a few of the Gladers gawking at her. Sensing her tension, Newt put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed, and immediately the others looked away. She glanced to him with thankful eyes and whispered, "See? You have more authority than you think."

Newt said nothing but did not remove his arm as they entered the Kitchen. It was like her first breakfast all over again. Nobody said a word as she entered though every eye—save Anil's, bless the Bagger—trained on her and her horrible shorts.

God, how she wanted to burn them! She should have. She should have stayed holed up in her cabin and complained about menstrual cramps—boys never wanted anything to do with that topic. No use turning back now. Rose steeled herself and pressed forward, her right hand reaching up and grasping Newt's fingertips.

"What!" she barked to the crowd. It was like turning on a light in a room full of cockroaches as their gazes skittered away. By the time Rose grabbed her food and sat down, the table mercifully covering her like a throw, most everyone else had gone back to their breakfasts.

But the boys at the head table were the exceptions to every rule. Alby looked a little more broody than usual, but Rose supposed that was because a pair of shorts should not be more commanding of attention than he was. Chuck, dear Chuck, was red from head to toe. But it was Thomas whose eyes made her breath catch. She could feel their connection without having to touch him because the look he gave her told her all the ways he wanted to touch her. Rose tingled despite their distance across the table.

Minho jogged in much later than usual. He looked out of breath already, his normally styled hair plastered haphazardly across a sweaty brow, probably from trying to catch up after his late start. For once, in this horrible weather, Rose didn't envy him his freedom to run the Maze—her muscles tightened just thinking of it.

"What the shuck is with all these shanks today?" Minho said through a savage bite of a peanut butter sandwich. "Why are they staring at the Greenie like they've never seen her?"

The Keeper grabbed his usual seat across from Rose and squinted at her like he was trying to work out her appeal. She offered him her favorite pucker in reply, which only elicited a snide grin from him.

Chuck started to answer, but Alby held up a hand. "That's what that shank gets for showin' up late. Let him figure it out for himself."

"Oh, come on! The one day I sleep in!" the Keeper of the Runners protested.

"Serves ya right. You still got a job to do same as the rest."

Minho scowled at their leader but continued to size up Rose. Meanwhile, Alby turned that keen gaze down the table to her as well. "Speaking of, you ready to try out your next job today, Greenie?"

Rose threw her head back. "Seriously, Alby, you're going to pick today of all days to make me change jobs? I thought we'd worked out a fair deal here."

Through a rather noisy bite, Alby answered, "Been almost a month. Look, she-bean, I been pretty lenient 'bout this whole Slopper thing, but rules is rules here. Greenbeans try their hand at everything until they find what fits."

"I thought there were only three rules. I don't remember that one," she retorted. Alby narrowed his eyes, but Rose persisted. "I don't understand what the big deal is? No one's complaining about the work I do, so doesn't that mean the job fits me? Can't we open this up for negotiations?"

"No."

 _Well, damn._ Rose raised an eyebrow. "You know, negotiation doesn't make you weak."

This time Alby put his fork down in favor of funneling the whole of his authority down onto her, and yet, there was a softness to his tone that caught her off-guard, especially in front of the others. "Ain't that what I been doing these last few weeks, Greenie? Ya made your point and still been useful doin' it, but you wasted as a Slopper and you know it."

Rose did know it, and, as she had just said, negotiation didn't make one weak.

"Fine," she drawled with a roll of her eyes.

From the table behind theirs, she caught a cocky voice. "I'll take the Greenie. Pretty sure she could raise a whole hut by herself at this point with those biceps."

Gally. He might have been mocking her, but Rose took the compliment anyway.

"We usually make the newbies start with the Slicers, but since Gally's offering, what say you, Greenbean?" Alby asked.

"I won't take it easy on you," Gally added.

Rose hated the mere thought of the word Slicer, so the longer she could put it off, the better. She crossed her arms and flexed as she'd seen more than a few boys do for her. "Ditto."

Gally's eyes bulged while Newt, Chuck, and Thomas laughed. Minho, as usual, lobbed his trademark ball of insolence Rose's way. "Why don't you build yourself a sound-proof room so the whole Glade doesn't have to hear you humming in the showers all the shucking time?"

Rose sneered. "Don't you have a Maze to run or something?"

"You two are like an old married couple," Thomas observed through a bite of granola, though his tone savored more of bitterness than humor.

Minho narrowed his eyes at his fellow Runner. "Slim it, ya lousy shank. Do you even remember one married couple?"

Thomas shrugged.

"I don't think you're supposed to marry someone you can't stand," Rose added for good measure.

"Hey, you don't _have_ to sit across from me," Minho scolded. "You _choose_ to."

"I—" she started, but Rose realized she had no answer. Most of the boys at the surrounding tables laughed—not Thomas, not Newt. Rose pouted before she jammed berries in her mouth to keep herself from saying anything else stupid.

She had just enough time to finish breakfast before Gally was already up. "Let's go, Greenie. You have no idea how long I've been waiting for this day."

 _Shit_. She looked to Newt and Thomas for strength, but they both shrugged helplessly. _Damn them_.

"Good luck, Rose," said Chuck with a wistful look. "I'll check in to make sure you're doing okay. I can help if you need me."

"I'll miss you, Chuck," she said. "Try to break the news easy to Ender."

"I think I can hear him crying from here," Alby added.

Rose pushed back from the table, reluctant to stand without the cloak of Newt's arm this time, until she remembered that she could climb twenty feet straight up a vine and swing a log over her head like a staff. She could do this. She was the baddest woman here, never mind the only woman here. She could do this. She stood up.

A fork clattered against a plate. Her pink shorts were directly in Minho's line of sight, and the man had had no prior warning. Rose felt the twitch of pleasure at having stunned the words out of him.

She breezed by Minho and over to Gally, who waited with a devilish smile on his face. "Come on, Shorty," he said.

Rose sighed. "Great, another nickname."

"You'll have about a dozen more before the day is out," Gally assured.

On a day like today, it was hard to believe being outside could be more oppressive than being inside a densely packed building, but the moment Rose stepped foot out the Kitchen door, she felt like someone had swaddled her body in a hot towel.

"You picked a hell of a day to start Building," Gally said as he wiped his brow.

"I didn't pick this."

Gally led her around the back side of the Kitchen where she found three boys already pouring sweat as they swung pick axes and shovels into rock-hard clay. Rose had seen them back there on-and-off for the last couple days, but even after all that work, they hadn't made a hole much deeper than any of their knees and less than the length of a picnic table. When they saw her, the boys stopped and leaned on their tools to watch.

Rose recognized one of the workers as one of boys she'd had breakfast with from time to time, a tall string bean of glossy black skin and blindingly white teeth named Eli. He winked up at her from the pit.

"Come to see how the real men work?" he flirted as he always did with Rose.

"Came to show you men how to do it better. What are you building?"

Eli swept his hands over their meager accomplishments. "Are you not impressed? We're building our princess a swimming pool."

Gally waved his worker off. "Fry keeps whining he doesn't have enough room in his fridge and his vegetables are going bad, so he asked for a cellar. But this ground is klunk and it's taking forever. We could use an extra pair of hands."

Rose's shoulders sagged. "Are you serious?"

"I told you I wouldn't take it easy on ya, but then you don't want me to, do ya?" Gally countered. "If it makes you feel any better, I'll warm you up with some log chopping. We need extra firewood for the bonfire for the next Greenie."

"I'm warm enough out here, thanks," Rose said, tugging at the neckline of her tank top, but Gally led her over to a cluster of squat trees on the other side of the Glade. Each trunk wasn't much bigger around than a grapefruit, and for an experienced Builder like Gally, it would probably take only a few well-placed swings of an axe to bring them each down.

He handed her an axe and waited to see if she could lift it. Rose returned his stare with a raised eyebrow as she hoisted the tool to her shoulder. It was much heavier than she expected, even with her intensive training, but she put on what she thought was a pretty good show of bravado.

"All right, little lady, let's see what you can do with that thing."

Rose scowled at the demeaning nickname and let her annoyance oil her muscles. She drew her arms back and raised the axe behind her head and, with full force, brought it slicing through the air. It thudded uselessly against the wood, barely making a chip in the craggy bark. Rose was already trying to come up with some excuse for her pitiful performance when Gally said, "Not bad."

"I barely touched it."

"You should have been here for Chuck's day as a Builder, shuckin' embarrassing, that shank. Knew right then and there he was made for Sloppin'. First swing is always the hardest. Just keep aiming for the same spot, and it'll come down sure enough."

Rose cocked her arms back again, but this time Gally's hands encircled hers as they adjusted her grip and the position of the axe in the air. She could feel the sheen of sweat on his palms, and as soon as he let her go, he dried them on his pants. He said, "Try like that."

Another swing. She hit just above her first cut, but this one was deeper, if only marginally.

Gally waited beside her, adjusting her next couple swings to guide her form, until eventually they heard the groan of the trunk. One more swing and the tree thundered against the ground in a flurry of rustling leaves. Triumphant, Rose roped Gally into a hug. He was much taller than she was, and her head thunked into his shoulder, her arms barely managing to squeeze his broad chest. Underneath her, he was as rigid as the tree she had just felled.

"Sorry," Rose said as she pulled back, brushing a sticky curl from her brow. "I can't believe I did it."

Gally cleared his throat as he tried to wipe the red from his cheeks with the back of his hand. "Yeah, well, don't get too excited. Took ya almost an hour to get it down and you ain't even done yet."

She stuck out her tongue at him. Rose wouldn't let Gally sully her victory. She had felled a tree on her own. Whatever else she failed at today, at least she knew how to bring down something twice her size.

Gally helped dismember the tree, and though he was twice as fast as she was at every log, Rose was pleased at her respectable pile. After a long water break, he directed them back to the cellar and tossed Rose in the hole with Eli and two other Builders to see how she fared with excavation.

Not ten minutes into chiseling away at the dusty red clay, Rose decided that Building, for lack of a better word, sucked. She had liked the challenge of chopping down the tree, but she could live without the excavation. With every jab of her shovel, she wished they were actually building a pool.

By the time lunch rolled around, Rose had accumulated a respectable tan as well as a half-dozen nicknames with everything from Legs to Princess to Rosie (she had a particular hatred for Rosie). Newt and Chuck waited expectantly for her at their table, but Gally insisted she eat with the other Builders, and Rose shrugged sorrowfully as she endured more playful jibes and casual flirting.

Under the blazing heat of the afternoon sun, work slowed even for the experienced Builders. Eli crouched in their pit sipping water from a dusty canteen and complaining about their lack of progress. He wasn't wrong. They had dug for hours and had only made about two inches worth of progress.

"Fry can just crawl in here on his shuck stomach for all I care," he barked.

Rose stood tall and drank in the sun against her face. She could practically hear her freckles darkening under its fine point, as though someone out there was trying to fry them like a child with a magnifying glass and a colony of unsuspecting ants. With envious eyes, she glanced to the Orchard where a handful of Track-hoes plucked apples from sagging boughs in shady nooks.

And then it happened. Even from across the Glade, Rose watched in horror as a boy high up in the canopy tumbled end over end, smashing into a thick branch before thudding onto the grass.

Without realizing it, Rose had leapt out of the pit and taken off at full speed toward him. Her legs pumped in time with her arms as she drove forward so fast her feet chafed against her shoes' soles. Her lungs puffed as they sucked in palpable globs of humid air until it felt more like she was running underwater. Her ears registered the alarmed shouts and footsteps, but she knew these weren't for her this time.

Rose pulled up as she neared the tree. Two other Track-hoes and Zart flanked the fallen boy, who she now recognized as Cat, the guy who had bested Winston in a fight at her welcome bonfire. Cat's left leg had snapped so gruesomely that part of his bone pierced his skin, sending a hot river of crimson onto the thirsty earth. The boy alternated between moans and sobs, but he didn't move, and Rose wasn't even sure he could.

Zart looked up at her with panicked eyes. "Someone get Clint!"

Rose was to her feet before anyone else could respond, and as quickly as she could, she scanned the Glade until she found the familiar mop of black and gray hair of the Keeper of the Med-jacks coming out of the Blood House. She pushed her body as fast as she could, and though she was a choking mess when she got there, she managed to order Clint to the Orchard.

"I don't have my kit. I have to go back to the Med-hut," he rambled.

"Just go," Rose commanded. "I'll get it, just go!"

With another pained inhale, she turned toward the looming hulk of the Homestead. She could feel her body reaching max exertion, but adrenaline and worry fed her taxed muscles as best they could. Still, she could feel her steps getting sloppy, and her foot clipped a boulder in the middle of the field. Rose tumbled forward, her body tucking and rolling out in a surprisingly elegant pile so she could stand. With no sprains she could feel, Rose resumed her race against the clock, blazing past a wide-eyed Newt headed the opposite direction and barely stopping at the makeshift emergency room.

Rose rifled through a few shelves, scattering bottles and bandages to the floor, until she found a weathered black bag that jangled with assorted tools. On a whim, she grabbed a sheet from the cot in the corner and raced back.

By the time she reentered the Orchard, a dozen other boys crowded around their fallen friend, including the worrisome addition of Anil. Over the yammering of the crowd, Rose couldn't hear Cat's groans anymore, and she wondered if he had lost consciousness—hopefully not his life.

She found Clint examining the wound with pinched brows, and she squatted down beside him. "I hope I got the right thing. And I brought this sheet in case we needed a way to carry him back to the Homestead."

Clint flipped through his bag, and finding everything there, he nodded before deepening his inspection of the break.

Rose found Cat staring glassy-eyed up at his shady green tormentor.

"Hey," she ventured, smiling down at him. Cat had barely enough strength to loll his head toward hers. "I thought cats always landed on their feet."

He groaned but Rose could tell from the roll of his eyes that it was from her bad joke. She took his hand and pressed her thumb into his palm. "Can you feel that?"

"I can feel everything," he rasped.

"That's good. Means you're not paralyzed."

"Doesn't feel so good."

"You want me to get Mom to kiss it and make it better?" she teased as she nodded toward Newt, whose gloomy visage had just broken their circle.

Cat managed a paper-thin laugh. "I'd rather you kiss it."

Rose smiled again and leaned over the pale boy, placing a light kiss at the corner of Cat's mouth. His lips were cracked and dry as the dirt, but his cheek was wet from his tears. "There. All better now?"

"Ain't gonna lie, that helped," he said and then passed out.

Clint withdrew a needle from Cat's leg and capped it. The Med-jack sat back on his heels and assessed the totality of the Track-hoe's damaged form. "That's the last of my anesthesia," Clint said. "Newt, you send down our order in the Box yet?"

"This morning," Newt replied.

"Shuck," the Med-jack growled. "Nobody else better act a slinthead between now and the next Greenie, or they'll be gnawing on their own tongue for pain relief. Come on, let's get this poor shank back to the Homestead."

Clint laid out the sheet and, with the help of three other guys, they gingerly walked Cat back to toward the house. As the other boys dispersed back to their work, Rose and Newt stood side-by-side in the shade, both fixating on the maroon mud at their feet.

"You were really something out there," he said at length. "Not sure anyone short of Minho could have gotten back so fast with Clint's bag, not even Tommy."

"Yeah, well, I'm exhausted," she admitted and leaned her head onto Newt's shoulder. "Do you mind if I get a shower?"

His arm reached around her shoulder again and rubbed her upper arm. A moment of self-consciousness flickered through Rose as his hand rubbed slowly over her tacky skin, and she wanted her shower ten times more urgently. "I'd say you've earned it, Greenie. If Gally gives you hell, I'll give that bugger hell right back."

"Never thought I'd be excited to hear that nickname again," she said, her head still on his shoulder. "Sure beats 'Legs'."

Rose felt Newt's shoulder tense under her. "Bloody shuck-faces."

They stood there for a long moment, both uncomfortably hot but unwilling to move.

At last, Rose asked, "Do you think Cat will be all right?"

"He better be," Newt said firmly. "You've only got room enough for one cripple in your heart."

Rose lifted her head to look at him as she squeezed his hand on her shoulder. "Damn straight, and that position is already filled, so you better go tell him to heal up."

Rose headed toward the showers, but not before turning to give Newt one last look. But he was gone.

She squinted in the afternoon sun and could just make out his distinctive lean in the murky shadows of the Orchard. Newt rested one hip against the tree as he spoke animatedly with Alby. Rose hadn't seen Alby among the faces that had surrounded Cat, but he had clearly been there, watching from some vantage.

Judging from the wild gestures and flapping mouths, they were arguing, though Rose couldn't hear much. She could only make out Alby's last few words: "I'm done talking about this, Newt. That's final."

Alby's bulky silhouette stalked off into the brush, leaving Newt alone as he stared out into his Glade.

Rose found Gally lounging under the awning outside the Kitchen. He was zoned out, his long gaze cast toward the apple trees. He seemed predisposed to entertain her desire for a shower, not even bothering to give her lip for cutting out of work early.

Her shower was every bit as glorious as she imagined. For once, Rose's body rejoiced at the cold water that gurgled up through the pipes from who knew where. She stood face-first in the icy deluge and gulped greedily, letting her skin prickle and relishing the illicit shivers she got as the water sluiced between her breasts.

As she washed, Rose discovered red blotches on her knees, and her heart stopped. She must have kneeled in Cat's blood. Panic, both new and familiar, stilled her hands as her fingers strangled her bar of soap. Cat's wound had been disgusting, but the sight of his blood covering her made her nauseous.

Without warning, Rose retched all over her feet. No memories came flooding back, no great epiphanies opened her consciousness, but primal fear drummed through her veins. She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't open her eyes.

Rose had no idea how long she stood there until she heard a bang on the wall, and her eyes snapped wide at last. Gally's voice boomed through the thatch. "You all right in there, Greenie?"

Rose dropped the soap and scrambled to pick it up, hurrying to scrub her knees until they were raw with the friction. "I—yeah. I'm fine. I'll be right out."

With the angry maroon replaced with her own throbbing pink, Rose found the strength to turn off the water. Her body shook as violently as it had when she came down from her adrenaline high on her first day out of the Box, but that had been from her exertion. This—this had been from abject terror.

When she opened the door, Rose found Gally with his hands on his hips and his strong brows dipped in a sharp, angry V. "I was about to send in a search party."

"I'm sorry," was all she could manage.

Gally's tongue poked the inside of his cheek as he assessed her. "Don't do it again."

Rose made no response. Her mind was far too preoccupied with splatters of red. She checked and double-checked her knees to make sure there was not a spot of blood on them. Checked and double-checked. It was fine, she was clean, she told herself, there was nothing of Cat left on her. But it wasn't Cat's blood she worried she couldn't wash away.

Rose couldn't shake the nagging feeling that there was other blood on her hands, and no matter how hard she scrubbed, it would never come off.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

 _EXO – Artificial Love_

Dinner was even stranger than expected. Newt had beat Rose to her usual seat, leaving her wedged between both Glade leaders. Their argument must have been worse than she thought.

The Track-hoes had formed a tight-knit table and left early into dinner service to see how their coworker was faring; Clint and Jeff, the only two Med-jacks in the Glade, didn't even bother coming down. Rumors circulated that as long as Cat could survive the blood loss, he would make it through the night, though nobody had any real expectations of his leg healing fully, not with a couple of teenagers to set the bone.

Chuck filled in Minho and Thomas about the day's events. "And you should have seen Rose fly! And she kissed Cat, lucky shank."

Both Thomas' and Minho's forks halted. After a moment, Minho recovered and scowled. "Wouldn't call breaking your leg clean in half lucky."

"Well, no," Chuck bumbled, "but still, you should have seen it. She could be a Runner!"

With that, Alby unceremoniously left the five of them gaping at the table.

"Was it something I said?" Chuck wondered.

Newt scowled. "There's no explaining that buggin' shank."

Thomas stared at Rose. He didn't say anything, but she could tell from strange churning in his eyes that he was unsettled, maybe even disappointed in her somehow. Despite every calorie she had torched that day, Rose felt her hunger wane.

Conversation was scarce after that. Minho and Newt discussed the Runners' progress that day, but everyone knew that if Minho had any actual news, the rest of them wouldn't be a party to it. Chuck did his best to lighten the mood with his story of Ender's extreme despair at Rose's departure from the Sloppers, but even she couldn't muster more than a half-smile for the kid.

Rose cleaned her plate and, as she stood to leave, her legs seized up. She felt like she was made of metal that hadn't been oiled in a century. Her hands braced against the table in a horrible mid-crouch as she willed the cramps in her hamstrings to loosen.

"You all right?" Newt asked.

"Yeah, just a little sore," she said, but she could tell no one believed her. She forced a smile through her grimace. "Walk me home, Chuck? I'm sure Ender will let you off your duties if you tell him I'm threatening to come back."

On their way out, Rose did her best to disguise her limp, but in pink shorts that already left little to the imagination, she could feel eyes boring into her. As they walked, her muscles continued to tighten, moving up from her legs to her back and shoulders as well. Rose could feel where her lungs had pressed against her ribs during her sprinting; even her organs seemed to ache. She collapsed on a stump outside her door, the one where she often found Newt in the mornings or Thomas in the evenings. Chuck chose the spare one right beside it.

"You look rough," the boy said as Rose hunched over and stretched her back.

"Thanks, Chuck," she groaned. "I feel worse."

"Don't get me wrong, you still look super pretty, but maybe you should see Clint."

Rose lifted her head just enough to shake it. "He's got his hands full as it is. I need a good stretch and a massage. You think the Creators could provide that?"

"Probably not, but—" His voice hitched in his throat. "—maybe I could help?"

"I was just joking. A good night's sleep should help," she protested.

But when she looked back up, she could see something at the corners of Chuck's eyes that Rose could only term as rejection. His voice was low and quavered slightly in the humidity. "I know I'm a lot younger than everyone else here and I'm not much good at anything but Slopping, but I want to help just the same as the next shank."

Rose reached out and patted his knee. "It's not like that, Chuck. I just didn't want to make you feel weird. You've helped me in more ways than I could possibly tell you, and I trust you more than just about everybody else here."

"Really?"

"Really. So, if your offer still stands, I'll take whatever shoulder rub you're willing to give."

The boy's eyes widened and he smiled with gratitude. Rose turned her back to him and presented her woefully hunched shoulders. Though Chuck tried to soothe her tense muscles, she could tell he was too hesitant to dig in like she needed, but she would never tell him that. She let his novice fingers flex and squeeze her shoulders and occasionally encouraged him with an appreciative grunt. After a few minutes though, Chuck stopped. Rose was about to glance back when she heard unexpected deep growl.

"Out of the way, runtcheeks. You're doin' more harm than good." With a single flourish of his arm, Minho muscled Chuck out of the way and pointed him in the direction of the Homestead.

Chuck bid Rose goodnight with a wary eye, but she soothed him with a shallow nod. It was weird, having Minho show up at her house—he never had before—and she tensed.

Rose started to turn around, but Minho's hands clamped down on her shoulders and squared her back to him. He offered no explanations or apologies. Deft ministrations swept down from the nape of her neck and fanned out to her shoulders and down to her triceps. There was no comparison between the two. Rose felt every year of maturity between Minho's hands and Chuck's, and though she couldn't bring herself to say it out loud, she was desperately grateful for the knowledge that lived in the Runner's fingertips.

Rose realized how carried away she was already getting in his touch from the sincere groan of pleasure she released the moment his thumbs found a knot at the base of her neck. Mortified, she tried to reel herself back in. "Nobody asked you—"

Minho's thumb dug deeper, teasing another groan from her. "Slim it, Greenie. Nobody knows more about muscle aches than I do. Just take the help and shut up."

But it was hard to shut up when Rose was spiraling into the sweet release each roll of his fingers provided. She could hear the noises that emanated from her lips and they were borderline inappropriate, but she could not stop them. Her head rolled toward her right shoulder and exposed a long swath of neck for him, her silent suggestion for him to travel to more intimate recesses. Minho obliged, brushing a few locks away from her skin with the back of his hand. The breadth of his palm roved upward, and his fingertips glossed into the still damp tendrils at the base of her head. Too briefly they lingered there before coasting back down to her shoulder blades and then happily back up again.

Rose could feel how near Minho was to her. It wasn't just the unbearable air that warmed her, it was his unbearable closeness. He guided her head toward her left shoulder this time and repeated his movements down to the same pacing. As they traveled back down her neck, his finger caught the edge of her scar, and Rose stilled. Minho had his fingertips on her greatest vulnerability, and almost imperceptibly, he stroked it. She shivered, and she knew he felt it. Her mouth went dry. What exactly was this?

On his second pass up the slope of her neck, his thumb detected another knot and paused to tease it loose, but it was stubborn and he leaned closer to gain leverage. Rose could feel his breath flower against her skin.

"That feels really good," she murmured before her filter could catch it. Minho didn't respond, but his thumb didn't stop either, and his other fingers tightened their hold on her collarbone.

"You smell nice," he said indifferently, but Rose knew better.

So, she wasn't the only one who was saying things she probably shouldn't.

"Just had a shower," she blathered to distract from Minho's rare compliment, but she ended up distracting herself. Her mind flashed back to Cat's blood on her knees and her muscles seized again.

Minho pulled back sharply, though his hands did not leave her. "Never heard of a shower making someone tenser. You got problems, Greenie."

"And you're one of them," Rose retorted, but his banter had loosened the grip of black fear on her heart, and her shoulders slumped again.

Minho's hands traveled down the center of her spine, over the torturous constriction of her bra, and fanned out along her ribcage. No one had ever touched her there, and her lungs tightened in a gasp at the unexpected sensation. Rose swore she could hear Minho's smirk at her response, and it only grew wider when he withdrew his hands from her all together and she sighed.

She actually sighed. Over Minho. How humiliating.

"Turn around," he commanded.

Pride got the better of Rose. Sure, it didn't help that there was a fair smattering of embarrassment that also dappled her face, but she didn't want to give the smug man the pleasure of her obedience.

"Oh, come on, Greenbean. Don't be any more of a shuckin' donkey than you usually are. I'm trying to help you." How could he manage to sound both caring and rude in the same breath? "I saw you get up at dinner. If you don't work out the lactic acid in your muscles, you won't be able to walk tomorrow, and then I won't be able to enjoy you serving me my meals."

So, she would be a Cook tomorrow. The thought of serving this sadist his food like she was actually his wife provoked Rose enough that she twisted around in her seat. Minho was waiting with a victorious grin, and she realized she had played directly into his hands—in more ways than just the one. Despite his relentless teasing, Rose discovered her entire upper body felt lighter, like it had been inflated with helium and she could just float away, that is if her legs weren't leaden anchors weighing her down. She could barely will them to turn her around as it were.

Minho's almond eyes appraised her. A torch of arrogance melted their chocolate depths as usual, but somewhere below that, Rose caught a glimpse of something darker, something akin to robust espresso. His jaw was set in a strong line despite the usually round planes of his face, and where it was generally easy for Rose to rise to the challenges that Minho provoked in her, she now found it hard to look at him.

"Give me your foot," he said.

"What?"

He sighed dramatically and grabbed her right leg for himself. With one swift motion, before Rose could even open her mouth to protest, Minho had whisked off her shoe and sock before casting them into the dirt. It was positively trivial, but Rose worried her feet would smell, especially with how much running she had done, but if they did, he made no comment.

The Keeper of the Runners spent a few moments rolling his thumbs across the balls of her feet and twisting and tugging each toe gently with purposeful skill. Rose imagined this was the kind of massage he gave himself each night after a long day spent in the Maze. Minho knew exactly how much attention to give to every digit and pad, and after he had loosened the ball of her foot, he took both thumbs together and dragged them down the valley of her arch in a motion so practiced that her head dropped back.

Facing Minho was so much worse than having her back to him. At least then he couldn't see Rose's face contort in elation at his touch, but now she was on full display for his analytical gaze, and there was no way the arrogant devil wasn't eating it up. Apologizing would only make it worse because he would know how much he was getting to her, so Rose had no choice but to pretend like it was no big deal. She let him circle her heel and then gentle rotate her foot as he loosened her ankle.

It all would have been enough right there if he had just stopped. But he didn't.

Minho braced her foot against the inside of his thigh as his hands encircled Rose's ankle and feathered upward, riding the smooth currents of her calf to her knee. Was it silly to be grateful she had just shaved? Damnit, this was just stupid Minho—she shouldn't care if she could braid her damn leg hair—and yet…

Minho's hands swelled up and back down, up and back down, but on their third ride up, one hand shifted to fully cup her calf and then gently manipulated it. She felt her muscle quiver, but Minho's firm undulations quelled the revolt before it could worsen.

Finally, when he had worked through the tension there, he scooted closer to Rose and straightened her leg over his. Minho looked at her, and she realized, without actually saying it, he was asking permission. She wasn't sure exactly for what, but regardless, she knew her eyes had already granted it because his fingers marched purposefully over her knee to the base of her thigh and the aching hamstring behind it.

Her heart was hammering. Hammering. All that work Minho had done along her back and shoulders, and now her chest ached with anticipation. She shouldn't be letting him do this—she didn't even like the guy! She had just said as much at breakfast, but now his hands were stroking her thigh, and Rose had never been more grateful for anything.

Minho's fingers surged higher, and Rose let out a breathy "Oh."

His hands stopped, and only then did she realize neither of them had made any sounds other than her grunts or gasps for the past few minutes. She could hear her raspy betrayal hang on the viscous air around them.

Their protective silence had been penetrated, and Rose knew she had no choice but to deflect the sudden mortification that surrounded her. She cleared her throat and looked off absent-mindedly toward the Homestead. "So, why is it you run?"

Rose couldn't bring herself to say his name because that would be like naming the strange sensations that now encompassed her, the same ones that had somehow stoked a fire between her hips. Distant was better, especially when a man she didn't quite like had his fingers plumbing the tender regions of her inner thigh.

"What a stupid question. Why do you think? Because somebody has to."

Rose shrugged. "So? Somebody else could."

"No," Minho answered with a firm shake of his head, "nobody else will."

"I don't believe you. We both know Thomas would. But I see your face every day before you leave for the Maze. It's almost… eager."

Minho dropped her right leg and leaned forward, his elbows digging into his knees. His brows furrowed as his eyes assessed her as firmly as his fingers had just assessed her hamstring.

"Eager, huh? You got me all wrong, Greenie." But from the way he snorted his solitary laugh, Rose knew she was right.

Minho grabbed her left foot this time and began the same rigorous treatment. It felt just as good and yet it was somehow different. Rose could tell he was thinking about something else and his fingers were just the distraction this time. As he moved to her calf, he released the sigh that had been building within him.

"Running in there is the only time in my life that I feel in control of anything. I'm doing something, not waiting for something to happen to me. And even though every day for two years I've come back with nothing to show for it, everyone relies on me. It gives me a purpose. If I didn't have one, I'm not sure I could survive here."

"You're the kind that likes to fight," Rose mused.

Suddenly, Minho's hands swept up to her thigh to the lip of her shorts, his thumbs digging pleasurably into the tightness there. Rose couldn't stop herself. She closed her eyes and let out one more completely inappropriate moan, and when she eased them open again, she could tell Minho had been waiting for it.

His eyes were consumed with espresso now, his posture tilted closer. His voice was as smoky as his gaze. "Only for what matters."

Though Rose had often felt the uneasy feeling of being watched, it was usually accompanied by red lights high up in the canopy. This time, however, it was another pair of brown eyes at the edge of the path.

She turned from Minho to find Thomas glaring at the two of them. The look of cold distrust he had shot her at dinner when Chuck mentioned her kiss with Cat was nothing to the avalanche of displeasure that bombarded her. Where Rose was now a soft heap of relaxation, Thomas was as rigid as a statue.

"I thought we were still on for our usual date, but it looks like you're busy."

The words Thomas used were so alien that if Rose had closed her eyes, she might never have suspected him of saying them. He never talked so stilted with her, and he never used such a combative snarl.

Minho dropped her leg and stood up with a perfectly blank expression. With a shrug, he said, "Didn't realize you two had plans. I was on my way out anyway."

Over his shoulder, he added to Rose, "Drink lots of water tonight or I'll have wasted my time."

She marveled at the ease with which the man could have treated her so gently and touched her so intimately, but now acted like it was some sort of transaction. At the very least, it offended Rose, but worse yet, it wounded her. She hadn't asked Minho to come; he had come of his own volition, and, much to her chagrin, aroused a curiosity—among other things—within her. It wasn't fair.

Too stunned to answer, Rose watched as Minho left, the Keeper pausing next to his Runner to offer him a polite nod before disappearing into lengthening shadows.

Rose and Thomas were alone.

The sun had retreated below the distant lip of the Wall, and her home was now swaddled in misty shadows. Though the sun's scorching eye had now turned away from them, the air continued to sizzle. At this rate, sleep would be damn near impossible even if Rose didn't have a hundred things to keep her up already.

Thomas stared at her and the empty stump next to her as though he could still see Minho sitting on it. "You could have asked me to do that."

She did not back down from their staring contest. "I didn't even ask Minho to."

"Don't you think that's a little weird?"

"Of course I did, but you weren't here. After the cold shoulder you gave me at dinner, I didn't think you'd come." Thomas hung his head for a moment while Rose's temper cooled. More quietly, she added, "I didn't do anything wrong, and I don't appreciate being treated like I did."

Pulled forward by the hurt in her voice, Thomas sat beside Rose like always. His hand reached out for hers as he stroked her knuckles with his thumb. Despite their argument, the tingles persisted—they always did. "I thought this meant something."

"Yeah, but we never said what."

It was Thomas' turn to look wounded, and Rose felt itchy prickles up her back like she had been unfaithful to him. Maybe it was the fact that Thomas had used the word "date," as though they were already a couple, or maybe it was because the connection the two of them shared was the furthest thing from her mind when Minho was running his hands all over her, but Rose felt unmistakable guilt.

"Maybe it's time we figure that out," he said.

It wasn't just the usual relentless curiosity that lit his eyes; there was some sort of determination mixed with a hint of mischief. Whatever Thomas had in mind, it had shifted something inside of him and, in turn, in Rose. Her breath quickened.

Outside the Walls, the sun had almost set. A spray of silver stars twinkled in the black velvet cape of night while the last remnants of the day tinged the collar of the sky purple. Rose hadn't yet lit her torch, so she could barely see the man who sat beside her, but she didn't need to see him when she could feel him so acutely.

Thomas let his hand wander north from her wrist, following the trail of her arm to her shoulder and, eventually, over it. His thumb traced the line of her collarbone as his grip tightened enough to urge Rose gently toward him. The tingles were tremors of excitement now. She was alive with the mystery of their connection. She felt his breath on the arc of her neck and then the graze of his bottom lip on her aching flesh. She was ready for fireworks.

She wasn't ready to hear her name from the beasts beyond on the Wall.

" _Rosalind_ …"

A few weeks in the Glade had been long enough to imprint the sound of a Griever in Rose's memory forever. She knew the peculiar wail of the unseen menaces almost as well as she knew the sound of Thomas' voice. It was a Griever, and it was calling her name.

It sounded like it was right beside them, not loud enough to wake the other Gladers maybe but plenty loud enough to send Rose darting inside her hut to light a lantern. Thomas was in a crouch, his hands raised in fists. There was nothing around them except for trees and a flicker of small, skittering red light up in the treetops.

"Must be on the other side of the Wall," Thomas hissed in a whisper. His eyes darted everywhere to be sure, but she knew he was right.

The Maze hadn't forgotten her. Its desire for her had only grown more vocal.

"I didn't think those things could talk," he added.

But Rose knew they could. She had heard them before at the Maze doors with Minho, only at the time, she didn't know it was them.

"Evidently," she replied.

Instead of frightening her, the sound galvanized her. Like Minho and Thomas, Rose believed her purpose was in there as much as any of the other Runners.

"I get the feeling it won't stop until I go in there."

If she thought Thomas would be more receptive now, she was sorely mistaken. He dropped his fists but did not release them. "Why do you keep insisting you should be in the Maze?"

"Hello? It fucking called me," Rose barked much angrier than she had wanted. "I heard you weren't any different when you got here."

"That was different, way different," Thomas insisted, but Rose could tell from the way his words ran out of steam at the end that even he knew that wasn't true.

"I get that everyone wants to keep me and everybody else safe, but I'm telling you, if I don't go in willingly, something's going to take me in there. I feel it, Thomas. I know it."

Though the Griever threat had only been fleeting, the real threat hung in the truth of her words. Thomas slumped down onto the stump and admitted, "I know."

Rose sat down next to him, the two of them staring off into space. "You believe me?"

"I could see it at the Gathering. The Creators put us in here for a reason, and that reason is the Maze." Thomas turned to her and grabbed both of her hands in his. "The others don't understand it, but I guess we can't really expect them to. We're different, Rose."

"Then why don't you want me to go in there?"

Thomas' features twisted in the wavering lantern light. "Because I'm terrified you won't come out."

His honesty was touching, it was also total bullshit. Rose could feel her passion rushing to color her neck and face as words she'd been desperate to say finally found a voice. "You don't think a part of me feels that way every time you go in? But you know what? I believe in you, Thomas, I believe that you will come back no matter what. I'm asking you to believe in me the same way. I'm not a delicate flower, you know, and in case it was wiped from your memory, too, let me remind you roses have thorns. I'm stronger than I look."

Thomas cupped her cheek in his palm and held her that way until the sky was nothing but ebony and starlight. At last, he said, "I do believe in you, Rose. And if you're stronger than you look, then I'm really afraid. I'm sorry about tonight. I don't know what came over me—"

"You were jealous," she interjected. "Don't make me feel like that again, like I was cheating on you. You know the way it is between me and Minho. Oil and water."

There was something in the twitch at his lips that made Rose believe he questioned that, but Thomas nodded all the same. "Is it all right if I hang out here tonight? I'd feel better knowing I stayed just in case."

Rose smiled. "Sure. Good night, Thomas."

She left the lantern for him and climbed into her hammock. With the sun tucked in bed already, the temperature had dropped several degrees, but the humidity was still stifling. Being cooped up in her touch-feely hammock amplified her anxious feelings.

So much had happened today, Rose wasn't sure she would ever get sleep. Aside from a boy almost dying in front of her, she also had to contest with a deluge of other feelings that she had never anticipated. The blood on her knees weighed heaviest on her mind, more specifically, her violent reaction to it.

There was some deep-seated terror within her that even a total memory wipe couldn't erase, something so horrible in Before Rose's life that nothing could ever undo it. Even touching on the notion of what it could be caused pain at the base of her skull. Her body did not want her to remember, and it was probably better if she didn't attempt it. But the knowledge loomed ever-present, as intrinsic as the notion of the inevitability of death—and it was just as alarming. She did her best to stuff the horror back down and replace it with something more palatable.

Thomas. If the Griever hadn't said her name, Rose doubted she would even be in bed right now. Thomas had almost kissed her—would have kissed her—and she would have let him. They barely knew each other because, hell, they barely knew themselves, and yet, a part of her had been hoping for it, maybe since the first time their fingers touched.

But when she finally shut her eyes, it wasn't Cat's blood or Thomas' lips she saw. It was Minho's hands, strong and purposeful and very, very welcome all over her. That idea alone was enough to keep Rose up all night, but there to make matters worse was a looping soundtrack of the embarrassing noises she had made at every flick of the man's thumb. Hearing herself in stereo helped her understand why Thomas had been so jealous. She wasn't with Minho—hell, she wasn't with anyone—but if she had walked in on that, wouldn't she have thought something much more intimate was going on? Damn that Runner. He tormented her every day, she would _not_ let him torment her at night.

Rose scrubbed Minho from her mind and willed perfect blackness to come to her. She had no idea how long she laid there, but eventually she was rewarded with the sweet escape of sleep.

* * *

This pearl was significantly larger than any others Rose had uncovered, so much so that she didn't have time for anything else. Judging from its size, it was important. Her quest to uncover it was all-consuming. Her spoon burrowed furiously around its perimeter, and as it dug, it became more and more of a challenge for Rose to avoid touching the wall. She knew if even her elbow grazed it, the pearl would likely be covered in a heartbeat.

Water sloshed at her ankles. The hands had not visited her today in the tiny grotto she had been forming, but rose sensed that if she didn't get this pearl out quickly, they would be upon her stronger than ever. The bigger the treasure, the harder those hands gripped her.

More fervently than ever, Rose slammed the spoon into the moat around the pearl, and at last her eye caught a tiny bobble announcing its release. With one final wedge of her spoon, the iridescent stone tumbled from the gaping mouth of the wall. It thudded into Rose's hands much heavier than she expected, and she nearly dropped it. It was the size of a basketball but as heavy as an anvil, and Rose had to crouch, her butt soaked by the lapping waves, to brace it on her knees.

This wasn't just a snapshot this time or a curt flash of knowledge like she was reading the dictionary definition of who Rose was. This pearl was like a projector, and as she held it, a memory—a moving memory—played across its surface on its very own silver screen.

She was in a cold room unadorned with any sign of teenage life. The floor was concrete, the ceiling was concrete, the walls were concrete. An industrial light buzzed sickly fluorescence on the already muted neutrals in the space. There was a tiny metal side table decorated with a notebook and glass of water. Beside it was a silver cot with two people on it.

The Rose from Before was sprawled out. A young man was on top of her, but his face was buried against her skin. The man's legs sheltered hers as his chest pressed against her in time with an enticing grind of his hips. One of his hands was in her hair, gently tugging a curl along her face, while the other was urging the hem of her shirt up. His lips were a whole other matter. They worked hungrily against her own and then traveled along her jaw, under her chin, down her neck just grazing her scar, landing at her collar. She begged him through a series of sighs.

The Rose from After knew that sigh. She had just heard it. Desire mixed with ecstasy. Her hand idly caressed the curve of the pearl as she remembered the hunger she had felt as clearly as if she were still on that cot with that man.

The Rose from Before ran a hand through the man's brown hair and urged him downward with a subtle push. Tingles, she was alive with tingles. Her back arched and her eyelids fluttered open as she whimpered his name.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

 _Charli Taft – Love Like You_

 _A/N: Sorry this is a day late—surprise, sick child. Aw, life._

 _This has nothing to do with the story, but if they hadn't cast the immaculate Ki Hong Lee as Minho, who would you have cast? Every time I watch iKON's videos, I can't help but think that Koo Junhoe would make an excellent Minho. Lord, in their "B-Day" video, I squint and go, "Min-Min, is that you?" Or in "Rhythm-Ta," even though he's blonde, he's got that just-right Minho swagger. I guess what I'm really saying is, someone please let me lay hands on Junhoe, please?_

* * *

"Thomas."

Rose was back in her hut, wrapped in a gauzy net of graphite with the approaching daybreak. His name, half-moaned, half-shouted, hung above her as Thomas' very real, very close face now did. Rose's first impulse was to grab it just as Before Rose had, but they weren't the same people they had been in her memory and she stopped herself.

The grin on Thomas' face fluctuated somewhere between intrigued and delighted. "Were you just dreaming about me?"

"No. Yes, but no," she stumbled. "It wasn't a dream."

Thomas straightened from his hunched position over her hammock. "Then what?"

"A memory."

He was silent for a long moment before he said, "Sounded like a good memory."

"I think," Rose began slowly, "we knew each other before."

"Before our memories were wiped?" he asked. She nodded. "Knew each other well?"

The dark concealed Rose's blush but not the bite of her lip, and Thomas' eyes darted to it immediately. "I'd say pretty well…" She trailed off at her implication as she tried to think of a way to explain just how much she had experienced in the grainy portal of her mind.

She didn't know for sure they had shared anything more than a passionate kiss, but Rose wasn't naïve. She could still feel Thomas' hair ruffled between her fingers as she drove his lips down her body. They were more than one passing heated moment.

"We were—we kissed."

Thomas cast his eyes down to his fingers, which glossed over Rose's, exciting a million little tingles once again. "Guess that explains a lot."

"Yeah."

"Was it good?"

"Yeah, it was good." Rose gave him a tight smile and swung her still bare legs over the edge of the hammock. Outside of its cozy pocket, the world had cooled and the humidity had abated. She rubbed the top of her thighs to generate some warmth.

Rose looked out the window to the dark woods. Though she could feel the sun coming up, it was far too early to make out anything beyond the silhouette of the hut. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and sighed. "It's still dark, Thomas. Why are you here?"

"Frypan's here to collect you. Cooks gotta start early I guess."

Rose let out a mighty yawn. "I can already tell I'm going to hate this job."

Thomas gave her a sympathetic smile before he left so she could get dressed. Back in the safety of her cargo pants, Rose tousled her curls and headed outside.

The burly hulk of the Keeper of the Cooks loomed like a sasquatch at the edge of the woods, and the thick plume of his beard ballooned the shape of his jaw in the shadows from Thomas' lantern light.

"Rise and shine, Greenie," Frypan grumbled.

His eyes made note of the addition of her cargo pants, and Rose scowled. Great, she was going to be defined as Legs for the rest of miserable life here.

 _Shucking Creators_ , she thought.

"I promise no shine," she rebuffed.

"I'm taking your girlfriend," the Cook said to Thomas.

Rose started to protest when the memory of Thomas on top of her ground those arguments to a fine powder. That may not have been this Thomas or this Rose, but they were still something to each other, now more than ever, and they would have to figure that out.

As Frypan walked with her toward the Kitchen, he talked non-stop about his own extensive list of rules, finally culminating with a surly order: "And don't you ever let one of these lousy shuck-faces near my fridge, or I'll be feeding you to the Grievers."

Behind the scenes in the Kitchen was a whole different experience. There were bowls and pots and ingredients strewn about long counters in a very particular sort of chaos. Though the number of things out was overwhelming, each pile seemed to be its own station, and the two other Cooks already there worked them one at a time.

At the other end of the counters was a tall pot squatting over a campfire stove already blazing. Rose heard something sizzling inside it, and the smell made her mouth water.

"Tonight's soup. Low and slow, I think they used to say," Frypan commented. Neither of them knew who "they" was.

The Keeper patted a poofy ball of dough into a neat dome before tossing it into a brick oven as he said, "Breakfast's the most important meal here because if you don't get it, you ain't eating anything until lunch. Tough to work on an empty stomach. It's how we keep these shanks on schedule."

Rose remembered how her stomach had quivered after the paltry breakfast she had received when she had arrived too late her first morning; Fry was right, she hadn't been tempted to sleep in since.

"And Cooks don't eat until everyone else's been served. We don't get the portions right, that's on us, so no extras, no matter how much they beg, not even for your boyfriend."

Rose frowned at his reference to Thomas but made no reply as Frypan placed her in front of a bowl of potatoes to peel. Whether it was rookie hazing or just a lack of supplies, she was given the world's rustiest peeler to do the job, and when she finally finished, she found that the sun was up and every other station had already been cleaned and its dish prepared.

"Get the lead out, Greenie. The other shanks'll be here any minute," Frypan squawked. The ease with which the hairy man chopped the potatoes into frightfully perfect cubes was astounding, yet sent a shiver down her spine.

By the time the home fries were browned, Rose heard the first Glader enter the cafeteria.

"Make yourself useful and go out there and serve," he ordered as he shoved the home fries into her hands.

As soon as Rose entered the main hall, she scowled.

Her first customer leaned at the end of the buffet, one hip propped over the table edge, all glossy muscle and easy charm. He waggled a plate like he'd been waiting ages.

Minho.

"Am I your first?" He sealed his innuendo with a cocky brow raise and a stealthy glance at Rose's now-clothed legs.

She grunted. "What the hell? Yesterday you couldn't even get here on time, and today you're the first in line?"

"What can I say? Today's menu interests me."

Rose narrowed her eyes at him. "I'm going to spit in your eggs."

"Is that any way to treat the guy who made sure you could get out of bed today? Now I'll take an extra spoonful of whatever _you_ made this morning as a thank you."

Rose considered dumping the whole tray of home fries right over the Keeper's head. "You did that all for extra food? You're despicable."

Minho smirked. "Despicable and hungry. Hurry it up, Greenie."

Rose didn't know what was more infuriating: the fact that Minho had, admittedly, made her feel something unexpected last night or the fact that he had done it for extra food. Rules be damned, she was going to search Frypan's pantry for his secret stash of saucy-sauce before this day was over.

Minho shook his plate in front of her, and she had no choice but to ladle eggs onto it. His smile widened as his eyes darted to the piping hot tray of potatoes. "I'll take some of that, too."

With a growl, Rose scooped up a spoonful of home fries and slammed them onto his plate so hard a few errant cubes shot into the hall behind them.

"Easy, tigress," he said. "Frypan hates wasted food. Now how about some of these tomatoes?"

"You can get those yourself," she barked.

"But I might take too many. Best that you ration them out for me."

Rose slapped one on his plate before dropping the other slice on the floor. She picked it back up and dropped it dirt-side down directly on top of the other one. "Oops, my bad. But you're right, Frypan hates waste, so eat up."

Minho scowled at first and then burst out laughing. "I'm really enjoying this royal treatment, she-bean. Remind me to give you another massage right before they make you a Track-hoe so I can score something extra out of that deal, too."

"How about I remind you right before I'm a Slicer? I might enjoy it more then."

One dimple creased his left cheek. "Seems to me you enjoyed it plenty last night."

Rose stomped into the back if only to hide her face, now as red as the tomato she had dropped.

"Insufferable egomaniac!" she hissed through gritted teeth as she slammed an empty tray onto the counter. "How can anybody here stand him?"

"Hope for your sake you're not talking about your boss for the day," Frypan said as he emerged from his pantry holding a large bowl of berries. Rose ran her hands over her face and sighed.

From the other side of the wall, she heard Minho shout, "While you're back there, can you fix me my lunch, chickie?"

Rose felt the growl in her chest before she heard it. Frypan laughed. "Minho's just messin' with ya. Try not to take it personally."

"It hard not to when—" Rose cut herself off before she could spill the beans about Minho's visit to her place last night. She had a feeling that would only make things much, much worse for her. "He's an ass."

"Hey, I ain't gonna argue with ya," the Cook agreed. "All the same, he ain't wrong about the lunches. We always make 'em for the Runners, or they have nothing. So let's see what you're made of, Greenie. You make 'em today." Frypan nodded toward a quaint production line of bread, meats, and vegetables ready to be assembled in little bags.

Great, a test of more than just her patience. Rose could feel the pressure to pass mounting, and, with slumped shoulders, she started building the sandwiches. She thought about sneezing on Minho's, but, as if anticipating her, Frypan supervised, and Rose had no choice but to bag them equally with an apple to boot. On her way out the door, she pilfered a homemade granola bar for Thomas' bag only—she hoped the other Runner would brag to his Keeper about it when they got back from the Maze—that would show him where her real loyalties lay.

Rose waited at the door to the cafeteria until she finally heard more voices to come in. The line of a dozen other boys filing in buried the sight of Minho behind them. Despite the wall of sinew in his way, she could still feel the Runner's eyes penetrating her.

In retrospect, she should have sent the man packing the minute he showed up at her doorstep last night, but she'd been tired and complacent, and—she had to face it—greedy, and now she was paying for it. Well, lesson damn-well learned. Minho would never touch her again.

Rose busied herself serving the others, smiling at her friends as they arrived and shorting Ender on his scoop of eggs just because she could.

Gally came through with smug smile. "A guy could get used to this."

"Well, don't. It's just for today," she replied.

Eli was just as pleased. "I don't know. It suits you, Princess."

"You mean it suits _you_."

Eli grinned and Gally shrugged as he said, "Sure beats looking at Fry's ugly mug."

"No extras," Rose retorted and smirked as their grins collapsed.

Chuck was the most excited of all to see her. Despite the early morning, the apples of his cheeks were ripe and his eyes were bright. "My favorite meal served by my favorite person. Could this day get any better?"

"It just started, Chuck," Rose laughed. "Lots of time for things to go wrong."

She regretted saying it as soon as it left her mouth as they both pictured Cat in the hospital. There had been no official word on his condition yet, though Jeff had stopped down to pick up meals for both the Med-jacks and their patient, so if Cat wasn't alert, they clearly hoped he would be.

"Want me to wait for you to finish serving?" the boy offered

"No need, the line's almost gone. Dig in."

Newt and Alby were next up—where Newt wore a brilliant, toothy smile, Alby was all stern forehead and stiff lips. She could feel their de facto leader's critical glare on each ladle of food, and though she was tempted to give him more just to get him off her back, she also sensed this was a test, so she refrained. With a nod, they joined their usual table, which left only one other Glader in line.

Thomas.

Rose had planned on playing it cool, especially in front of the others, but she could just _feel_ she looked weird, like she didn't know what to do with her hands or her own face. It didn't help that Thomas smiled at her in a way that it felt more like a wink and, despite herself, she flushed. She couldn't forget the feel of his hips squaring over hers in her memory, and it made her want to do stupid things—really stupid things.

Thomas presented his plate to her, and, thinking she was keeping things pretty natural, Rose reached out to brace his hand holding the plate as she put a bit of everything on it. She was enjoying their moment of stolen affection, but evidently, she wasn't as good of a thief as she thought.

Though he was no longer looking up, Minho muttered, "Jeez, get a room."

She jerked her hand away from Thomas as though he were a hot pan and glared at the Keeper of the Runners. Flustered, she sing-songed, "Enjoy your breakfast."

Ugh, horrible. She sounded like a waitress.

"You eating with us?" he asked hopefully.

"Got a few things to wrap up in the kitchen, but sure."

After each of the Cooks had made a plate for himself, Rose made her own and joined the table. Things were different. Newt and Alby still bookended her usual side of the table, but Chuck now sat between Minho and Thomas.

"What's with the musical chairs?" she asked.

"Don't look at me," Minho said, not that she was looking at him anyway. "I ain't moved."

Rose eyed the arrangement suspiciously before remembering she had to distribute the lunches to the Runners before they left. When she came back, most of the boys were finishing up, and she dropped them off as quickly as possible. With only Thomas' and Minho's lunches left, Rose returned to her table.

Chuck looked up at her hopefully. "Rose, I was thinking that maybe after dinner tonight I could bring over some stuff I made for your house, you know, so it doesn't look like we stuck you in our shed anymore."

"Oh, thanks, but I, uh—" she stuttered as she looked to Thomas, "—tonight might not be great. I have some other stuff to do first, but tomorrow maybe?"

Chuck hardly seemed fazed, but Minho tapped his fork against his plate. "Maybe next time you have a date, you could put it on the calendar so others don't inconvenience you."

"Date?" Chuck and Newt said in unison.

Rose narrowed her eyes. She could hear her breathing ramping up as the snowball of anger gained momentum in her chest. "Are you being this petulant on purpose, or is this just who you are? How old are you?"

"I'm not the one blowing off the kid because you want to lock lips with loverboy over there."

With a stare as hard as granite, Rose dropped a lunch bag with a thud in front of the Runner. "Here's your lunch, asshole. Hope you choke on it."

Minho licked the inside of his bottom lip as he eyed the bag. He didn't say anything more, which was fine because Rose had nothing more to say to him. She stormed off with her breakfast, on her way to the Baggers' table—they might creep everyone out, but at least they weren't actual creeps.

Behind her, she could hear Newt snap. "What's your problem today, man?"

"Me? No problem at all. Matter of fact, I woke up feeling as good as I look," Minho trumpeted.

Over the weeks, Rose had begun to fancy she had a pretty good understanding of these Gladers and their dynamics, what made them tick and how to earn their trust. But Minho was the exception to everything. He was hot, he was cold; he resented her, but he helped her; he sought her out, only to shove her away. Last night, he literally refused to take his hands off of her, and this morning, Rose had almost been convinced that he was flirting with her, but now she saw he was just deliberately antagonizing her, to what end, she had no clue. He had already won by keeping her out of the Maze, was he just so sick in the head that he enjoyed torturing her? What else could he possibly have to gain?

Against her better judgment, Rose stole a glance back at his table. Minho's head was bent over his plate and his arms boxed him in. He looked like he was sulking. He didn't make any sense.

One by one, many of the boys began to filter out, Minho leading the charge with firm slaps of his Runners' backs. Thomas followed suit but at a literal safe distance. Something was off between those two, but Rose was so tired of dealing with the boy drama, she let it slide. They could sort it out in the Maze.

Anil sensed her distraction and offered her a redirection. "I have not seen you in my neck of the woods in quite a while, little Greenie. I imagine that will change soon."

"You know, some people here might take that as a threat," Rose observed.

"Death comes for us all, little Greenie," the Keeper replied frankly.

Jackson smacked his palm against his forehead. "Shuck, man, she was making a joke."

"Ah, I did not get it," said Anil.

"Yeah, we noticed," Billy, another Bagger, deadpanned.

Despite herself, Rose smiled again. "Did Alby say when I'd be working with you?"

"Not sure," Billy answered as he wiped the last of the grease from his plate with his finger. "End of the week, probably. Alby's sort of wingin' it with you, doing everything out of the normal order."

A strange sense of dread built up in Rose's stomach. She pictured Cat on the ground yesterday, looking more dead than alive, and then pictured having to put him in the ground. She did her best to hide her shudder with a bite of eggs, but she knew it had not escaped Anil's notice though he didn't say anything.

The boys finished breakfast shortly thereafter, leaving only the Cooks and the Sloppers behind, and one very wary Newt. The blonde teen approached her table and copped a seat beside Rose. He offered a tight smile and said unceremoniously, "Sorry about Minho."

"If he wanted to, he could apologize for himself," Rose grumbled.

"That's true. The bugger's asking for a good punch to the face. Half the time he means well but just doesn't know how to show it."

"And the other half, he's just a dick." Rose sighed, her cheek slouching down into her hand. "Can somebody tell me when exactly I'm supposed to get used to him?"

Newt dodged her question in favor of his own. "What happened between you two now?"

"Nothing," she snapped much sharper than she expected.

"Okay, easy, Greenie," he said with raised hands.

"Sorry," Rose said, more in control this time. "I didn't get enough sleep last night and this cooking thing is so much earlier than I expected. I don't know how Fry does it."

"Everything all right?" Newt sounded less concerned and more suspicious.

"Yeah, just weird dreams," she lied. Rose didn't really want to lie to Newt, didn't even _intend_ to, but she also didn't want to tell him about the Griever calling her name again, and she wanted even less to tell him about what had almost happened between Thomas and her.

Her answer seemed to alleviate whatever emotion Newt was feeling though, and he offered a half-smile. "So, we didn't get to have our usual talk yet. What'd you discover last night?"

Rose was always excited to tell her friend about her dreams, but this time she hesitated. "It's not—not really anything. I mean, it's nothing. Stupid stuff."

The blonde straightened with expectation, his keen eyes shining. They were so piercing, so hard to hide from when they were turned on her full-force. "Oh, must have been a bloody good one then. Come on, out with it."

"A kiss," Rose blurted. She winced as soon as she admitted it.

"Oh," Newt replied, sitting back. "Wasn't me, huh?"

She laughed, relieved he hadn't asked who it was. "Nah, I'm not that lucky."

He paused for a long moment as he flicked crumbs from the table. "Was it at least a good one?"

The way Newt asked it, Rose didn't think he really wanted an answer, so she replied, "It wasn't with you, how could it be?"

All alone in the Kitchen, it came out far flirtier than she had intended, and they shared an awkward silence as Rose desperately pined for a rewind button to this whole morning. At last, she managed, "Guess I better get back to things."

"Yeah, probably a good idea," Newt said.

"Yeah." Damn, she wanted to bang her head on the table. "See you later?"

"Later, Greenie." And with that, Newt left Rose to her work and, worse, her thoughts.

* * *

Rose didn't think anything could have been as awful as being a Builder on the hottest day in the Glade, but by the end of the morning in a hot kitchen with Frypan, she had a new appreciation for the Keeper. It was at least twenty degrees hotter in front of the ovens, and Rose was roasting as much as one of the pigs on his spit. She could only have imagined how horrible it had been in there yesterday, especially under all Frypan's fur.

Watching the man dice the potatoes this morning had been nothing compared to his ability to carve up filets of chicken and beef. No energy was wasted as his muscle memory took over. Every slice of his knife was so purposeful, it made Rose shiver. She found herself rubbing her scar feverishly.

Rose was allowed to peel produce, measure spices, knead dough, and get more water for the soup broth—that was it. Frypan wouldn't even let her melt butter on the camp stove.

"You'll burn it."

Most of the time, she leaned against the counter and asked questions that were either given one word answers or none at all. After weeks of working non-stop, the stagnation was agonizing to the point that she was actually excited to wait on the other Gladers hand and foot; at least they seemed to appreciate her whereas Frypan just seemed to resent her.

Rose gathered plates to take to the dining hall when the Keeper stopped her. "You caused more trouble at breakfast than you helped. Why don't you be a good little Greenie and run this food over to the Med-hut?"

Frypan handed her a neat little bundle tied up in a large handkerchief and shooed her out the door. Grateful for something to do, Rose headed for the Med-hut in the blinding sunlight and knocked on the door.

"Come in," croaked a voice on the other side.

"How's my favorite invalid doing?" Rose beamed.

She thought she might find the guy stretched out like the cat that he was, maybe sunning his arms in the the window framed by dust-caked curtains and looking as cocksure as he had when he had paraded around the winner's circle at the bonfire. Instead, she found a shriveled kid whose once lustrous chestnut hair had faded to a dull oaken brown and whose skin looked pale despite his tan. At least his eyes were bright as he smiled up at Rose.

Cat ran a hand through his hair and wiped his fingers under his eyes. "Heard your kiss knocked me out cold."

"Pretty sure that was the drugs, but okay." Rose dragged a chair to his bedside and sat down. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I fell out of a tree and broke my leg."

"Har har," she replied. Her eyes fell to Cat's side table stacked high with plates still covered with huge chunks of food. "Have you eaten anything?"

"No, Frypan cooks for klunk," he joked, but she could see a hint of something akin to shame lurking in their depths.

Rose placed the package from the Kitchen on the edge of his bed and began to unwrap it. Small trays piled with colorful food emerged—even extra helpings, which told her Frypan cared more for his fellow Gladers than he'd let on—and a sealed bowl of soup sloshed inside. "Well, I'll have you know that I peeled these carrots and kneaded this here bread, plus, I even poured in the water for the broth, so I'll take personal offense if you don't eat something."

Cat raised a brow and ripped off a small hunk of bread from one of the trays. "So they got you playing Cook today? How do you like it?"

Rose shrugged. "I might like it more if Frypan let me do anything. I don't think he trusts me near sharp objects."

But Cat shook his head once. "Nah, that's just Fry. He's real controlling of everything that goes in and out of his Kitchen. Got nothing to do with a little ol' Greenie."

Cat grimaced as he tried to scooch up to a sitting position. Dragging his injured leg was an impossibility, so Rose reached for some nearby pillows to bolster his back. "Let me help."

But the kid waved her off, snatching the pillows from her and doing his best to prop them behind him. "It's okay," he insisted. "I need something to do. Being cooped up here is jacking me right up in the head."

"I hate to tell you this, but you don't look great."

Rose meant it as a soft jest, but the truth was, the longer she studied him, the more she worried. Sunken cheeks, a sheen of sweat on his forehead, and dark circles under his eyes troubled her, though she supposed that wasn't out of the norm for somebody healing from major trauma. Still, there was a strange odor about the room. It could have been the ripening stench of the uneaten food or just the smell of a room that had housed so many injured kids in the past, but the more it tickled her nose, the more Rose worried.

Yet Cat didn't let on if he felt anything more than the pain in his leg. He licked his lips. "Just hungry is all. Waiting for a pretty lady to make me something edible."

Rose smiled but it was forced. "How's the pain?"

"Well, it ain't great," he said after another bite of bread.

"They giving you anything for it?"

"I got a ration of white pills here, but it's like putting one bucket of sand on a bonfire: it ain't going to work."

"How about sleep?" she asked. "Are you getting enough?"

Cat smiled. "You wanna be a Med-jack, Greenie? Or you angling for a date?"

Rose rolled her eyes but teased, "Probably neither."

He ran another hand through his hair, slicking some of the sweat from his brow back onto the dull strands. "Be honest with you, I've hardly had two minutes to myself except at night. There's always somebody coming or going to check on me."

Rose felt a little embarrassed for having just pulled up a chair and intruded on Cat's healing time. No wonder he looked so off, if he couldn't even close his eyes to escape the pain. She stood up and announced, "Sounds like you need a break. I'll get going."

"I'm not saying you got to go," he protested, reaching for her, but Rose placed his hand back on the bed and folded it around a spoon.

"I know, but I do. Make sure you eat. I'll know if you don't."

Cat's face fell, but she could see from the deep creases along his eyes that it was the right thing to do.

As Rose headed for the door, she found Zart waiting on the other side. His eyes widened at the sight of her. Before he could say a word, she put one hand on his chest and gently pushed him back. In her best mother hen voice, she instructed, "No more visitors right now. Cat needs to rest."

"But he's my—"

"I know. But it will do more harm than good for his recovery right now." Rose could tell by the way Zart looked past her that it wasn't sinking in, so she tugged at his shirt. "Please?"

Zart's gaze returned to her, and after a moment and a nod to Cat, he allowed her to close the door behind them.

Rose spent the rest of the afternoon by Frypan's side, finally learning how to hold a knife to chop vegetables. At first, her hand had trembled as it gripped the blade, so bad she couldn't trust herself near her own fingers, but Fry talked her through it, even lending his own hand to steady hers through three carrots before she found the courage to do it herself. Of course, Rose's carrot pieces alternated between slivers to honking chunks too big to eat in one bite, but she had done it.

"Well, ya didn't lob off a knuckle," was all Frypan said in response to her accomplishment, but it was all the compliment Rose needed.

During dinner, instead of serving, Rose was tasked with putting away the ingredients and by the time she was ready to join the hall, half the tables were empty. The head table was still occupied with Minho stubbornly anchoring his usual spot with a sullen glower, but even if he were nursing the last canteen of water in a desert, Rose wouldn't sit with him. She joined her fellow Cooks instead and stayed until the Sloppers were the only ones left.

When she finally rounded the path to her room, she found Thomas waiting in his familiar spot on the stump. He smiled at her.

"So what'd you think of Fry?" he asked as she joined him.

She sighed. "He surprised me, in a good way. Even let me cut up some of the carrots for the roast."

"Yeah, I could tell," Thomas joked, and Rose elbowed him in the side. "But that's pretty impressive. He didn't even let me near his knives."

After a quiet moment, she reluctantly shifted to less favorable subject. "What was up with you and Minho today?"

Thomas turned away. "Do we really need to talk about that?"

"Need to? No, but it was kind of weird for everybody else. Didn't look like things were any better at dinner."

"Could say the same for you two," Thomas replied a bit sharply.

"Yeah, but Minho and I were never friends. You two are. You should figure it out, whatever it is, because I don't like the thought of you out there in that Maze being distracted by anything."

Thomas leaned a bit closer, a sly smile creasing his cheeks. His eyes were bright and focused on nothing but Rose. "Then I probably should stop coming here because I've been distracted all day."

"Is that right?" Rose could hear the flirty challenge in her voice. Under his suggestive gaze, she felt her pulse quicken. "You want your own room, too?"

"If it means I could be alone with you there, sure." The back of his hand brushed along her jaw as he cupped her face, swiping a thumb from her lips up to her cheek over and over again. "I wish you hadn't told me about your memory this morning. It's all I can think about."

Thomas' touch was the same as in the Before. She knew that now, and the old Rose was coming through with it. It didn't matter that Thomas was a different man now—he was still her man. Every brush of his thumb polished that sterling memory of being in his arms. She leaned forward.

"I can't remember that kiss," he said, "but I'll remember this one."

Thomas closed the distance between them, stopping at the last agonizing second, a mere breath separating them. Rose's eyes closed. She breathed him in—sweat and sun and dirt—as her lips parted in anticipation. He lingered just out of reach, teasing her.

Eyes still closed but now wearing a half-smile, Rose whispered, "What are you waiting for?"

And his lips were on hers. The tingles were now earthquakes under her skin. There was no polite chasteness, no tentative touches, just two reincarnations hungrily channeling the ghosts of their pasts. This kiss was every bit as ardent as the one she had resurrected that morning. Though Thomas had one hand drawing Rose's mouth ever deeper against his, his other hand traced her shoulder up her neck, and into her hair where it wound stubborn tendrils around every finger until they were hopelessly entangled with each other. There was no escaping whatever this was any more.

His tongue glossed over her bottom lip, and the searing contact sent a shiver down Rose's body that propelled her hands to grip Thomas' biceps. She needed him closer. She pushed further into his mouth, knocking her teeth against his. Rose could taste more of him, and he tasted like hunger itself. One hand slipped from his bicep to the hem of his shirt, and she dipped her fingers underneath, just grazing his waist. With a grunt of approval, Thomas sucked her bottom lip. Their breathing grew louder and more frenzied, and they couldn't hear the footsteps approaching.

"Holy klunk, I thought Minho was joking about your date."

Rose would know that innocent voice anywhere. Her eyes shot open and squinted hard as they readjusted to the saffron yellow of the setting sun, and she jerked back so hard she slammed her elbow into the wall of her hut. "Chuck! Gally? What are you doing here?"

"Sorry," the kid said, "the way you made it sound this morning, I didn't think you'd be here. We were going to surprise you." Sheepishly, Chuck presented a handful of knick-knacks he'd whittled for Rose's room.

Beside him, rigid as the Walls and eyebrows pointed down in a sharp angle, Gally waited with a long plank of wood, perhaps a shelf. His powerful chest rose and fell with steady, stiff breaths. His voice was low and laced with menace. "Why'd it have to be Thomas? I mean of all the shuck-faces in this place it had to be the absolute biggest shuck-face of 'em all."

"It's not—" Thomas started to answer before Gally tossed the plank onto the ground at the other man's feet with a resounding thud.

"You don't know the kind of lousy slinthead he is, Rose," Gally spat. "But you keep him around, you will. Don't come cryin' to me when he breaks your heart or worse."

With that, Gally turned on his heels and thundered back to camp red-faced.

Rose panicked. Her heart was racing for entirely different reasons now, and her whole body trembled. "Gally, wait!"

He stopped. Rose hadn't actually expected him to, and her mind turned with all the things she wanted to say: apologize for being weird, demand that he explain what he meant about Thomas; ask him why he even cared so much. But all that came out was desperation. "Please don't say anything to the others."

"Don't worry, I got nothing else to say."

* * *

A bespectacled woman in a white lab coat leaned forward and tapped a ragged peak on a chart glowing on a monitor. "I'll be damned. You know I'm loath to admit it, but she was right. Look at that spike in A2's Light Box! We haven't seen readings like that since we started the Trials."

Another scientist, this one with a receding hairline and a wide, flat nose, raised one eyebrow as he studied an adjacent monitor. On it, a girl and a boy were frozen in a tangle of limbs mid-kiss while their unseen spectators jotted down notes on their clipboards in a flurry. "And A2's not even the Target Subject. Can you imagine the output we'll get when we begin a Redirect?"

The first scientist shook her head emphatically. "After these promising early results, it's easy to get excited, but it's been years, Dr. Espina, years; I think we can wait a few more months, especially if we're only scratching the surface of the possibilities. She left us a specific list of instructions for her experiment, and to maintain its integrity, we must follow them as precisely as possible. If they produce the levels she posited… Could you imagine!"

Dr. Espina nodded slowly. "It would change everything."

"It could save all of us," the woman concurred. "But I will grant you that the Target Subject's reaction to the alternative clothing stimuli was the most promising thing I've seen in nearly a decade of research. And considering the Protocol's source, I think we could perhaps skip ahead to Directive 2.3, if you concur?"

Dr. Espina returned a hint of a knowing smile to his colleague. "I concur, Dr. Thorne."

"That one never was fond of following instructions anyway. In the meantime, shall I issue another missive?" Dr. Thorne asked, her finger hovering over a fat toggle switch on the control board.

Dr. Espina paused and jerked his head toward his monitor. "No need, the other Subjects took care of it. In the meantime, I'll notify Chancellor Paige of our findings."


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

 _Whitesnake – Is This Love?_

 _A/N: Yeah, that's Whitesnake up there. #noshame_

* * *

Despite the continued heat wave over the next couple of days, Rose felt a cold front coming from Minho and Gally. Though she was used to Minho's sourness, she had thought she and Gally had forged some level of respect during her stint as a Builder. Now, he couldn't even look at her. Without the two biggest mouths in the Glade constantly sparring with her, everything seemed too quiet—even lonely.

Rather than poke the bear, Rose threw herself into her next jobs. Slicing was up first, and almost instantaneously she figured out she'd be a huge failure. Things started off promising when the Slicers' black lab, Bark, greeted her with an exuberant tail wag and sloppy kisses, but they took a nose dive the moment Rose entered the Blood House.

Fetid odors wafted up from the floor and radiated down from the ceiling. It was the kind of dark inside that even a ten-thousand-watt bulb couldn't disperse, a darkness that came not from the absence of light but from the absence of mercy. The dirt floor was stained garnet, as was every other surface in the space. Huge, naked hooks dangled hungrily from the rafters, and below waited thirsty buckets splattered with congealed blood. There was death in these walls, and it made Rose's skin crawl.

In the three minutes it took for Winston to explain what Slicers did, Rose had already made up her mind to bargain away every food ration she needed to as long as it kept her out of the Blood House forever.

Winston sent her out to the animal pens first thing, and even though it reeked of manure baking in the sun, it was leagues better than the rank of decay that lingered inside the butchery.

Once the pens were cleaned, Winston had no choice but to bring Rose back inside and introduce her to the tools of his trade. It wasn't the job itself that upset her, nor was it the cavalier way with which Winston chatted about his grisly work. It was the tools.

As the Keeper unrolled a leather pouch containing his instruments of death, he explained each piece: shears and sharpeners, a spreader and a frightening bone saw with wicked little teeth perfect for gnawing at ankles. Winston pulled out his prize possession last. A spear of sunshine winked off the gleaming metal of an enormous bowie knife almost as long as his forearm.

The next thing Rose remembered, she awoke to a wide, flat tongue slurping her cheek. She was in a heap on the dusty red floor, Bark and Winston standing over her, with the Keeper's brows and his knife raised. Rose let out a blood-curdling scream that sent the man stumbling backward.

Rose didn't remember running, but suddenly she was under the protective embrace of a wiry tree not far from the Deadheads. Her hand stroked her scar as she stared beyond the brilliant green of the Glade to another world she couldn't quite bring into focus—shades of evergreen and rusty orange and the deepest black she had ever seen, the black of pure evil.

Later she learned that Anil had found her and talked to her for almost a half hour before she heard a word. Luckily, nobody made her go back to the Blood House after that, and Rose spent the rest of the day working out her demons on her private training course.

Being a Bricknick was a considerable relief after yesterday's fiasco, and Rose spent the day under the tutelage of their Keeper, a reserved fellow redhead named Preston. They repaired a railing in the Homestead and then shored up the leaning wall behind the showers. The Bricknicks might not have been as busy as the Builders, Cooks, or even the Slicers, but their job offered a homey familiarity that she appreciated. Rose wondered if her father had done handy things like this around their house, wherever it had been—assuming she even knew her father or ever lived in a house.

Since she was already at the Homestead, Rose stopped in to visit Cat. His eyes looked less tired and his skin wasn't as drawn, but the strange smell she remembered from her first visit had intensified. Now that she had spent a morning in the Blood House, Rose recognized that smell as rot. She resolved to ask Clint or Jeff about it the next time she saw them, though she didn't honestly expect them to know much more about it than she did.

By the time evening rolled around, Rose sat on the stump outside her hut alone for the first time in a long time. After Gally's vehement reaction to seeing the two of them together, Rose and Thomas had decided it was best to take a few days off from whatever was developing between them to let things blow over. Besides, with how quickly their first kiss had escalated, distance was probably a good thing. It was also hard.

Being the only girl in the Glade had always carried with it a certain spotlight that followed Rose everywhere, whether she wanted it to or not. Not that she intentionally worked to be the center of attention, but Rose had grown used to it, and now that she had pushed many of the others away, it left a strange void. She was well and truly lonely for her first time in the Glade with nothing but a mounting number of regrets and a fair bit of shame to her name.

She was in bed before the sun had set, and she waited wide-eyed below her thatched roof for the ravenous galaxy above to consume her.

She awoke to a knock on the door. "Come on, Greenie, week's almost over. You're with me today."

Despite the stern voice, Rose smiled. It was one of the few jobs she had been looking forward to, if just for the company: Track-hoe.

"If you don't bloody answer me, I'll have to come in there, and trust me, that's nowhere near as fun as it sounds."

"I'm up, I'm up," she groaned.

Even though Newt meant every word of his warning, Rose was loving it. She missed people giving her a hard time, missed rising to the challenges of their teasing. Life in the Glade without that twisted warmth was just that—cold and unbearable. The boys had proven a point, and now it was her turn to prove one to them: they needed her as much as she needed them.

The more devious side of Rose, the one still irked by how successfully their silent treatment had worked, contemplated sporting the Creators' horrid crop-top if for no other reason than to demand the boys' attention. Petty, sure, and even a bit underhanded, but it would be rewarding for mere shock value. Ultimately, though, her practical side won out.

She opened the door just as Newt was in mid-knock. "Finally."

"I didn't think I'd see you or anyone else here again."

As they turned back toward the Kitchen, Newt sighed. "Gally told me what happened."

"I knew he couldn't keep his mouth shut," Rose growled and punctuated it with a crack of her knuckles as she made a fist.

"In that slinthead's defense, he's just worried about you. He's gets a little protective of this place."

"Oh, come on, it was one kiss—with Thomas of all people."

Newt shrugged. "That's kind of the point. Gally and Thomas have history."

"History?" Rose balked. "Thomas has only been here one month longer than I have! How much history can two strangers have?"

She realized the folly of her statement as soon as she'd said it. Shouldn't she know this better than anyone else? Wasn't that the whole point of what she and Thomas had been trying to uncover together—their history? It was either that or just admit Thomas was a good-looking guy, and her hormones were out-of-control, which was also possible.

"You'd be surprised," the blonde replied. "Our Tommy has a way of getting under people's skin."

Rose couldn't argue that point. "Who else knows?"

"Just me and Alby."

She stopped herself before she could ask what Minho's excuse for ignoring her was. Like that jerk needed another reason to hate her.

Rose rolled her head back, feeling every bit the willful teenager she was. "Are you going to give me a lecture, too?"

"Lectures are Alby's thing, not mine." Newt paused as he considered something behind his hazel eyes. "But would you take some advice from a friend?"

"Sure."

Newt held his pause so long that every muscle in Rose's body began to tense. His teeth gnawed the inside of his bottom lip for a moment, and after a long exhale, he said, "Just don't get carried away. There are consequences out here none of us are really prepared for."

He didn't mean injury or death or any of the other horrible things the Gladers had faced so far. There was only one thing Rose could do here that none of the others could, and the thought of it stopped her dead in her tracks.

Neither of them said another word until they had joined their table for breakfast, and, as it had been the last couple of days, it remained awkward. Newt had resumed sitting in his regular seat next to Alby, resigning Rose to the dead space across from her iciest critic. Thomas was now at the opposite end of the table from her, and if that wasn't a clear message, she didn't know what was.

"You look nice today, Rose," Chuck observed.

"You always look nice," Thomas amended, and Rose could see the rest of the table visibly tense.

Enough was enough.

"Bloody hell," she blurted out as she slammed both palms on the table, earning an incredulous smile from Newt and a deep scowl from Alby. "Are you all really going to be such babies about this? It was one kiss."

It wasn't just the clatter of utensils dropping to plates from the surrounding tables that jarred Rose, but the piece of toast dangling from Minho's aghast lips. She might have completely negated Gally's vow of silence, but then again, he had already done that partially himself. If everyone was going to vilify her over a stupid kiss, Rose would put them on trial instead.

Alby stood up and pointed with one thick finger toward the exit. "I need to see you outside. Now."

Rose tossed her hands up but followed Alby behind the Kitchen near the still-unfinished cellar.

"We need to talk," he began. "Ever since you got here, she-bean, you been nothin' but trouble for me. I can appreciate it ain't been much easier on you either, but you lookin' out for you. I'm lookin' out for everyone here. I need you to understand what you do to my Gladers and why you can't be doin' and sayin' stuff in there just because you want to."

"Actually, I don't _want_ to have this conversation at all," Rose countered. "I didn't _want_ to share that part of my life with anyone other than Thomas, but Gally saw fit to bring the rest of you into it like it's any of your business."

"Everything that happens in my Glade _is_ my business, Greenie," Alby hissed. "Order is what keeps us alive, and respect for each other is what keeps us together. You're challenging both."

"I'm not trying to! I'm trying to figure out who I am and how I fit in here, and all I get is judgment and lectures and guilt-trips because 'I'm a girl' and 'I'm different' and 'I'm distracting everyone else by just breathing.' Well, it's bullshit. I can't help any of it, and I'm not going to try to anymore either.

"I respect you, Alby, and how much you care about us, I really do, but if you want to be a leader of anybody, you'd know that doesn't come from total control. People have to want to follow you." Rose reached out and grabbed his wrist. Alby looked down to her hand and then back to her face. "I want to follow you, but don't try to police my whole life. And don't you dare put anyone else's behavior back on me ever again. I refuse to be held accountable for what boys think and do."

She removed her hand, and Alby softened. He was still wary—the caution he had had in his eyes since day one had never left—but he was listening. "Fine, just understand that no matter what you might think, it's more than just the two of you out there. Other shanks here, they care, some of 'em more than they should."

"Is that a warning?"

Alby shook his head. "Nothing like that. You just don't know the effect you have."

Rose wanted to ask what he meant by that, but the man was already redirecting. "This is probably all pointless anyway. Next week we'll get another Greenie, and it'll probably be another girl, and no one will care anymore."

"Nice," she retorted, "keep me humble."

Alby puckered his lips. "Fat chance in hell for that. You just like that shuckhead, Minho—ain't nothin' I ever say gonna sink in."

"Hey, I resent that."

Rose moved back toward the Kitchen door, but it was Alby's turn to stop her. His fingers curled around her shoulder and squeezed. "Just keep in mind what I said, Rose."

Her real name from his lips made her pause, but Alby punctuated it with a surprisingly gentle caress of her skin with his thumb before he removed his hand. The only response Rose could manage was a nod.

Everyone stared as they reentered the Kitchen and rejoined their table, with a few notable exceptions.

"Where did Thomas and Minho go?" Rose asked as she sat back down.

"Off to the Maze, I think," Chuck said.

"Already? Isn't that a little early, even for them?"

Chuck just shrugged in response.

Newt swiped a grape from her plate and she slapped his hand. "Keep that up, and I'll have Anil throw you in the Slammer."

Newt grinned. "You ready to actually work for the first time this week?"

"What do you think I've been doing every day?" she replied.

"Besides testing Alby's patience?"

Rose rolled her eyes. "Leave the wise-cracking to Minho, would ya?"

It was wonderful to talk again with her friends, to banter and play and feel like a part of something. She even lamented the end of breakfast, though the promise of a day spent with Newt was the most exciting one all week. As Second-in-Command, Newt would help out whatever group needed him, which often meant the Gardens since it usually had more work than hands. Plus, it didn't hurt that he could keep an eye on every Maze entrance from there.

After showing Rose around the Gardens, Newt took her to the Keeper of the Track-hoes. Zart loomed over the beanstalks and tomato plants, his hoe cocked high over his head in mid-swing. Despite the milder temperature, beads of sweat dotted already his brow.

"My turn to babysit, huh?" he said, wiping his brow.

"Suddenly, everyone fancies himself a comedian today," Rose grumbled.

Zart assigned Rose to the least desirable chore of all, watering the plants. Most of the boys sat back teasing and whistling as the grumbling redhead carried jug after jug of water over to the rows of seedlings and carefully doused them through the homemade watering cans.

"Shuck-faces," she groused at them, which only sent a ripple of laughter through her audience. In spite of herself, Rose smiled.

The sun was nearly at its zenith when Newt sauntered over to the grape trellis. As he helped Rose secure a branch of the grapevine, he asked, "So, what do you think about being a Track-hoe, Greenie?"

"I like feeling productive. It's kind of cool to make something grow out of this garbage soil." Rose smiled and added, "And no knives is a huge bonus."

Newt paused, his fingers brushing hers as he tied the loop on the vine. "But?"

"But I don't know. Alby's right, I got problems. I still feel antsy, like this isn't my place."

Newt leaned against the trellis, his arms crossed firmly over his chest. "You think your place is in the bloody Maze."

It wasn't a question because he already knew the answer.

"Still a couple of jobs left to go, Greenie. You might change your mind," Newt added hopefully. "Besides, I don't think you'll argue that the company's better out here."

Rose joined him against the trellis and bumped his shoulder with her own. "No contest."

As they stood there under the unflinching sun, staring out at the rest of the Glade, Rose's eyes caught movement at the South door. She squinted. "What's going on out there?"

Newt followed her eyes to two figures emerging from the Maze. They jostled back and forth, one of them trying to soothe the other one, but he just keep brushing the other angrily away. She could hear them before she could make out their faces.

"Where's Alby? Somebody get me Admiral Alby!" Minho snarled.

Thomas grabbed his friend's arm and tried to slow him down. "Minho. Minho! It's not going to change what's happening. Listen, man—"

Minho jerked his arm out of his friend's grasp and yelled, "Where the hell is that shuck-face? Alby!"

As Minho's eyes swept the Glade, they spotted Rose and glared at her. Though they had been on opposite ends of almost every argument since she'd arrived, Rose had never seen Minho look at her so frostily. It was hard to imagine that someone who, only a few days ago, had touched her so intimately could act like she was the reason they were all trapped in this hellhole.

Under Minho's withering gaze, she shriveled like one of the grapes. "Great, what did I do now?"

Rose racked her brain for anything she might have done to send the Keeper of the Runners into such a frenzy, but there was nothing. They hadn't said a word to each other in two days, and she'd been in the Gardens all morning, but there was no mistaking Minho's fury nor the fact that it was aimed at her.

Alby trotted out from the Homestead toward the commotion. The three men headed toward one of the buildings Rose had never been allowed in, a small stone hut Newt called the Map Room. Upon seeing their leader, Minho shifted his anger from Rose to Alby, and though he was still yelling, she couldn't hear them anymore.

Rose took a step forward but Newt pressed her back with a hand on her collar. "I better go check this out. You stay here, finish tying those vines."

"But—"

"That's an order, Greenie," he snapped, and once again, Rose felt the power the young man was capable of wielding.

She nodded as a breeze feathered his blonde hair and carried him away from her.

The slam of the Map Room's door boomed off the Walls, and Rose was left alone with the sinking feeling that everything was about to change for the worse.

* * *

Rose had no idea how long Newt was gone, but it was long enough that she had eaten lunch and hoed a new garden bed. Her eyes darted to the Map Room, but near as she could tell, none of the men had emerged from whatever conference they were having.

Right before the Track-hoes packed up for the day, Newt emerged from the stone hut alone. He trudged across the field toward the Gardens, his limp looking a little more pronounced than usual. He headed straight for Rose, his lips pressed in a resigned line. With a long exhale, he sat down next to her in the grass, his legs stretched out in front of him, hers tucked under her chin.

"How was your day?" He tried to sound cheerful and failed miserably.

"Could have been better," she replied.

"Bloody same."

Newt didn't say anything else, just glanced toward the Maze with sorrowful eyes. Rose's fingers drummed furiously against her shins until she blurted, "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Are you going to tell me what's going on because it sure feels like that whole _thing_ ," she emphasized with a wild gesture toward the Map Room, "was about me?"

"It's bigger than you, Rose," he sighed.

"But I'm a part of it."

"If it were up to me, I'd tell you, but it's not my secret to share. You'll just have to wait. No doubt you'll hear about it before the day is out."

Well, that sounded ominous. If this was about her kiss with Thomas again, she would have to put out a public bulletin to stay out of her business. But something about Minho's eyes had told her otherwise. The more she thought about that look he'd given her, the more she realized it wasn't just anger that had stoked his irises, but something else—maybe fear. He was afraid of her.

Dinner was a quiet affair. With Alby, Minho, and Thomas conspicuously missing, there wasn't much to distract Rose's thoughts; she was too preoccupied with the memory of Minho's eyes. Secrets roiled beneath the surface, and her thin layer of patience was quickly eroding.

As soon as she was finished, Rose marched to the Homestead in search of the Keeper of the Runners, but he was nowhere to be found. She added a quick jog around the Glade, stopping at any of his usual hangouts, including the Map Room, but the door was locked and she couldn't hear anyone inside. After almost an hour of fruitless searching, Rose headed back to her room.

Evening arrived, the gentle kiss of night's cool promise ruffling the nape of her neck. Up high on the Wall, she heard the caw of a lone crow pining for attention. Something skittered above her head in the trees. Rose caught a flash of silver followed by the buzz of red light, but she was too frustrated to give the creature anything but the middle finger.

The door to her room was ajar. Her eyes narrowed as she tried to cut through the murkiness inside. It wasn't until she had taken two steps inside that Rose could make out her intruder.

"Shut the door," Minho commanded.

He stood in the misty shadows, his arms looking particularly intimidating against the pale blue of his shirt. One look at him, and Rose's haunches bristled.

"What are you doing in my room?" she asked. No need to mention she'd been looking forward to this confrontation for the last hour.

From his pocket, he flung a shower of red rose petals at her. A few of the velvety teardrops slid down her bare arms like a lover's fingers. "Care to explain these? Found 'em in my section of the Maze today. _Only_ my section. Ready to tell me how they got there?"

Rose picked up one of the petals and rubbed it between her fingers. "How should I know that? You won't even let me in the Maze."

"That's interesting because it sure looks like you've been in it." His words were stony as his eyes drifted to the corner of her room to the patch of dirt where Rose had scrawled the abstract patchwork she had yet to knit together.

"What's your point?" she spat. "That's just nonsense from my dreams."

His forearms flexed as his fingers clenched his biceps. "If it's nonsense, why even bother to write it down, huh? It's a map of the Maze, you shuckette. You still going to be pretend you haven't been in it when you seem to have it all mapped out already?"

Rose paced her room. "This is ridiculous. I'm not going to stand here and take the third degree from you."

"Oh, this ain't no third degree, chickie. I'm flat-out accusing you. I know you've been in the Maze before. I've seen you. Or did you 'forget' that, too?"

"Yeah, I forgot it, just like I forgot everything else about myself. I'm not any different from any of you. For all you know, you could have been in the Maze before, too. Difference is, there was nobody here before you to judge you about it."

Minho rolled his eyes. "You followed me before you got here, my little Shadow, and you're following me now."

"Says the slinthead standing in _my_ room. You've had it out for me since day one. I saw your face when you captured me, Minho, so proud of yourself, like I was some trophy."

"You ain't no trophy, lady. Get over yourself." But Minho's arrogant façade was crumbling under Rose's piecing stare.

She pushed harder. "For all I know, you could have put those in there to frame me. You said they were only in your section, and you were the one running it. Do the math, genius."

Minho threw his hands out to his side. "You're something else, you know that? Of all the dumb shuckin' things to say. Why in the hell would I do that?"

"I don't know. Who knows what goes on in that sadistic pea brain of yours?"

"Pea brain? I'm Keeper of the Runners, woman. I'm the best of the best."

"I think all that beautiful hair takes up too much real estate on that head of yours. It's crowded out all your common sense, assuming you ever had any." Minho was dumbstruck, and Rose smirked. "If I found a way into the Maze, what would be the point of coming back? I could just stay there. You think I just made those sounds myself—those things, whatever they are, calling me? Something wants me in there, Minho, and for whatever fucked up reason, it wants me in there with you."

Only after she had uttered those careless words did Rose realize it. The anger she had seen in Minho's eyes had never been for her, but the fear she had sensed underneath had been. Fear for her, not of her. He didn't really believe she'd put the petals there; he wanted her to know that someone had, that someone was toying with her—with both of them, that someone wanted her for a darker purpose than either of them could imagine.

Rose might never have realized all this if she hadn't been standing so frighteningly close to him. In the heat of their argument, her feet had propelled her closer to their confrontation until she had no choice but to look at the consequences of her impetuousness. Rose had Minho pressed against the wall with only a half-dozen inches between them. He was so much larger than she was, in height and body, but she had him cornered beneath her fury, and power surged through her with her adrenaline creating an intoxicating cocktail. Despite herself, despite the anger that Minho always managed to provoke in her, even Rose had to acknowledge he looked damned good backed into a corner. Her eyes flicked to his neck, to that bicep and that rugged forearm—all clean. He had showered before he came here.

"Are you trying to torture me?"

His words cut through the tense silence, and Rose sucked in a breath—at some point, she had stopped breathing. What was wrong with her? There was an edge to Minho's voice she didn't recognize, something that sounded an awful lot like pleading.

A strange wave of hurt snaked through her as she processed his words. Rose was suddenly conscious of how little oxygen there was between them. She was conscious of everything, the way she could feel his warmth without touching him, the way the air crackled around them. It must be torture for him to be this close to someone he despised.

"I'm sorry that my presence is torture," she retorted and took a step back.

Suddenly, Minho's hands were on her waist, pulling her back to him. "Why do you insist on misunderstanding everything I say, Rose?"

He was talking to her, but he was looking at her lips. It was only the second time Minho had ever said her name, and her breath hitched. He tugged her closer until her hips bumped against his, and the touch sent shockwaves into her bones. Whatever Minho was trying to say, her whole body was evidently listening.

There was a knock at the door.

"Rose, are you in there? I brought the stuff I made you." Another knock. "Rose?"

Minho's head rolled back with a thunk against the wall, and his hands dropped from her waist, leaving patches of gooseflesh in their wake. With a low grunt, he stalked over to the door and yanked it open to reveal a very startled portly kid.

"Chuck, you shuck-faced slinthead son-of-a-shucking-shank."

With those words, the Keeper of the Runners blew by the Slopper without sparing a look back, his boots trudging down the path back to the Homestead.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

 _Otis Redding - (Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay_

Rose's room had never felt so crowded. It was littered with hand-carved knick-knacks, browning rose petals, and footprints that weren't hers, not to mention the oppressive memory of what might have been a kiss with the man who Rose had long-suspected of hating her. Unless, of course, Minho was just messing with her again.

The more she thought about it, the more annoyed Rose was. How dare that slinthead imply she was torturing him when he was clearly going out of his way to torture her. It was like everything he did had an end goal of aggravating her. In front of an audience, he was all sharp edges, but when it was just the two of them, those edges were blunter yet just as capable of cutting. What chafed even worse was the knowledge that Minho had already laid waste to Rose's solemn promise to never let him touch her again. And she hadn't fought back—she had to reconcile that humiliating fact.

And if he had kissed her? Rose didn't want to think about that.

It weighed on her mind all the way to breakfast and pressed even harder when she sat down across from him. She stared. She couldn't help herself. Rose had to puzzle him out, for the sake of her own sanity.

Minho was different today—something was off. Not his general surliness toward her—one glance at his furrowed brow gave her all the clarification she needed—but something else. His hair maybe. It looked more styled than usual. The spiteful part of her brain thought about squashing it flat.

Rose didn't realize how long she'd been staring until Minho looked up with a wicked grin and said, "See something you like?"

She opened her mouth to respond but shut it immediately when she realized she couldn't come up with a witty answer.

Newt glanced to Rose then Minho before he leaned casually next to her and whispered, "You all right?"

More humiliation, great. She managed a sheepish nod and hurried through her pancakes so she could get this day over with.

With only two jobs remaining for try outs, Rose was tasked with the last one she'd been dreading. Though being a Bagger was decidedly less traumatic than she thought it would be, especially compared to her experience Slicing, the mere mention of the job gave her the sensation of a million little centipedes running up and down her spine.

Seeing firsthand how closely Death lurked behind every Glader even on mundane days had heightened her fear of the title alone. But, thankfully, when they weren't putting people in the ground, the Baggers policed the Glade, mostly keeping watch on the entrances to the Maze, not that there were too many inquisitive souls left willing to risk their lives for a peek at more walls.

All in all, it was a rather boring job. Rose spent the early part of the day with Jackson seeing the Runners off. Thomas and Minho had both smiled at her as they jogged toward the South Door, but where Thomas' smile was laden with private affection, Minho's was laden with trouble made worse by the teasing wink he added at the end.

Jackson laughed, a deep bellow that matched his baritone. "I don't get so much as a nod most mornings."

In the afternoon, Anil sent Fen, the last Bagger, to summon Rose to the Deadheads. She hadn't visited in a while, and the place felt even more claustrophobic than before. She glanced around for the swarthy man but could not find him among the jeweled tones of the canopy.

Her eyes fell on a flat wedge of sandstone lying on the edge of the cemetery with a small heap of scrap wood beside it. The sight of it made her heart race.

"I did not actually expect you to come," Anil said, emerging from the cloistered shadows beside her. "I would have thought you would be in the Maze by now, little Greenie."

Rose laced her thumbs over the lip of her pockets and stared relentlessly at the yet-nameless block of stone in front of them. "You know that's not up to me."

"It is not?" He sounded genuinely surprised, as though she were the fool for doubting.

She ignored his question in favor of her own. "Why are we here?"

Anil shrugged one shoulder. "I thought you might like the quiet. It is always very loud around you."

Rose laughed, a booming sound that rustled against the treetops and made even the perennially tranquil Anil jump. Somewhere up above a bird took off in search of a more peaceful refuge. She couldn't remember the last time she had laughed so hard.

"I'm sorry," she said, wiping a tear from the corner of her eyes. "You're something else, Anil. I'm glad you're my friend."

"We are friends?"

Rose faced him, looking every bit as perplexed as she felt. "Aren't we?"

It was the first time she had ever seen the man sincerely smile. It was a strange thing, rather robotic as the corners of his lips creaked haltingly upward. The end result was mildly frightening and only provoked another laugh from Rose.

The two of them hiked a bit above the cemetery, stopping just before they reached the secret rose bush. Rose sat down in a patch of scraggly grass while Anil sat beside her. Her eyes surveyed the graves for a minute before she asked, "How do you do it? Bury a friend, I mean?"

"I start by breaking up the earth with a pick axe—"

"No," she said with a light sigh, "I mean, how do you find the strength to do it?"

"I do not understand. I would bury a friend the same way I would bury a stranger: with respect and dignity for the life he led."

"Don't you ever feel overwhelmed by it, Anil? So many kids dead for no real reason." Rose's voice trailed off as her eyes once again fixated on that stone just waiting to be assigned a name.

"Death does not require a reason, little Greenie, and I suppose I do not feel overwhelmed because I understand that. Death is not just an end but a beginning."

Rose turned her head toward the Keeper and hugged her knees a little tighter. "A beginning of what?"

Anil raised both eyebrows as he considered. "I do not remember exactly, but I believe I once had an answer for that. It is just something I know."

Rose smiled. The Keeper of the Baggers may have been strange company, but he was good company.

They sat for a while longer in silence. If Rose had been alone, she might have felt the restless spirits of the dead boys creeping up beneath her feet or, even worse, the ghosts of the World Before plaguing the dark recesses of her mind, but it seemed even Death itself respected Anil. His presence soothed most of Rose's overworked imagination, but in doing so, it allowed one particular memory to float to the top.

"Anil, do you really think people will die because of me?"

The Keeper paused briefly before he answered, "Yes. But that does not mean it will be your fault. You, little Greenie, are hope, and hope is worth dying for."

Always with the riddles. Rose took a few long breaths, inhaling until her lungs stretched against her ribs. "Well, I don't want that. Could I stop it?"

"You could try, but you would probably fail."

Anil's eyes caught movement below and he stood up. Rose couldn't tell from her vantage who was coming, but the Keeper said, "We had better get going."

Halfway down the hill, Rose realized the intruder was Clint. She could see from his raised haunches and shifting eyes that he hated being here, perhaps a reminder of his failed attempts at saving his fellow Gladers. At the sight of Anil, he hurried over. He gave a curt nod to Rose and gestured to the other Keeper to join him in the woods.

Anil turned to Rose. His eyes mapped her face, studying everything from her forehead to her lashes to each freckle that festooned her cheeks. "I think your service as a Bagger is over, little Greenie. You may do as you wish now."

Rose glanced between Clint's anxious face to Anil's placid one, and her heart plummeted. She nodded to both of them and left the Deadheads with a tight chest. Going back home was not an option. If she had time to think, she knew what she would be thinking about, and she couldn't let herself do that. Her feet carried her instead to the Gardens, where Newt kept her busy enough to let her forgot the bags under Clint's eyes.

When evening came, Rose sat with Thomas outside her room and let him tell her about the night he and Minho had spent in the Maze rescuing Alby, which offered a sufficient distraction from her day. No more rose petals this time, and no more mention of them.

Thomas talked until she couldn't listen anymore, and when she dreamed, she found she couldn't extract even a single pearl. The hands were too close and too hungry tonight. They were as restless as Rose felt, and no matter how much of the gray matter she threw their way, they came back hungrier than before.

* * *

She must have fallen asleep outside because she didn't remember going to bed, but Rose woke up in her hammock all the same. Though yesterday had been a light day in terms of physical exertion, she was exhausted. She had trouble swinging her legs over the side of her hammock, and she considered staying in bed, but today was her last job and also her last day as the designated Greenie, so she had no choice but to get up.

It was still early, not quite sunrise but on the cusp. Rose did not wait for breakfast. She was too eager to check on Cat, who had been the largest source of her anxiety, so she headed straight for the Med-hut. She was surprised to see quite a few others already outside. Alby, Newt, and Zart crowded around the open door, lantern light spilling out into the dove gray of morning. Bustling shadows passed through the errant beams in a macabre puppet show.

"You're awake," Newt said, startled at the sight of her.

"I've been worried," Rose replied, "and since I'm supposed to be here anyway, I came."

"Probably not the best day to try Med-jacking," Alby said. "Might be better served waiting until tomorrow."

"I want to help. I need to. Please."

Alby kept his eyes firmly fixed into the glowing portal. His face was etched with the same finality of a tombstone. "Not sure you can, Greenie."

Rose could hear her breathing escalate as the first surge of adrenaline hit her veins. She muscled between Newt and Alby into the Med-hut. The first thing to hit Rose was the smell. It was more pungent than anything she had smelled, even in the Blood House. Thick and heavy, like a soup of rotted meat cooked slowly over an open flame, it caught in her throat, and Rose considered clawing at her esophagus to get it out. She dry-heaved but caught herself before she could actually throw up. Her eyes watered as the odor wrapped around her head like a suffocating rag.

The room was littered with junk. Clint and Jeff raced from shelf to shelf as they tossed useless supplies and bottles to the floor, seemingly immune to the smell. They shouted at each other, but the air was so thick, it was hard for Rose to focus on their words.

And Cat was in the center of all of it. Laid out rigid on his cot, his hands gripped the sheets in white-knuckled fists. His body sparkled with rivulets of cold sweat, each one splintering the fire light like a human diamond. Rose wished she could say he was beautiful, but the way his mouth contorted like a banshee mid-scream shattered the vision irreparably. He made no sounds but a series of staccato choking that caught somewhere in the back of his throat. His chest fluttered so fast it looked more like spasms, and a pool of fresh vomit had congealed beside his head.

"Cat," she soothed though he did not move. "Cat, I'm here."

Rose grabbed a rag from the bedside stand and mopped the sweat from his face and arms and cleared the vomit as best she could. She soaked another rag in cool water and pressed it against his brow in the hopes that it offered some margin of relief. She ran her hands down his left arm until her fingers found his clenched fist. She pried it open with just enough time for him to latch onto her and squeeze mercilessly. The pressure made her eyes pinch shut, but she hoped at least Cat knew she was there.

"Get out of here, Greenie! Somebody get her out of here," Clint yelled, but Rose ignored him. She couldn't will herself to move anyway, no matter the horror in front of her. Cat needed someone—he needed her.

Zart grabbed Rose's shoulders and tried to throw her out, but as he wrenched her back, her other hand caught the corner of Cat's sheet and ripped it away.

From ankle to knee, the boy's leg was shades of plum and eggplant and ink, roiling out like the galaxy that split their sky every night. Onyx bubbles like boiling tar ballooned around the wound where Cat's bone had broken through, and the reek intensified until every spectator inside and out was gagging.

"Not like this," Rose murmured as she gaped at the wound. "We don't die from this. We can cure this."

"What are you shucking talking about?" Clint demanded. "What is she talking about!"

They didn't know. Rose didn't know. Words were spilling out of her mouth that she wasn't even conscious of making. "This isn't how we die. It isn't right."

Jeff put his hands on his head as he stared at Rose in disbelief. "Shuck, she's going off the deep-end. We don't have time for this!"

Suddenly, Rose wrenched her hand from Cat's, and she was off and running. The sun had turned the sky orange and gold, rousing fellow Gladers from their beds. The rooster crowed down by the Blood House. And Rose ran.

She didn't stop until she reached the Box. Her arms flung wide as she commanded the attention from the monsters she knew were watching. She spun in a wild circle as she screamed, "Save him, you assholes! Save him! I know you know how. I know you can hear me. You cowards! His name is Cat. He's my friend. You save him right now, goddamnit, or so help me, I will find you and I will fucking kill you."

The Box didn't move. It didn't even make a sound—no whirring mechanisms, no squealing metal. Silence from it, silence from the Creators.

Rose fell to her knees. Through racking sobs, she whispered, "Save him."

She felt the bile rising in her throat, and she didn't want to stop it. She had to get it out. She had to get rid of this demon inside of her. She threw up in the middle of the grass. Again and again.

"Save them," she cried on her hands and knees. She was begging, and no one was listening.

Them? Rose didn't know what she was saying anymore, she wasn't even sure where she was. Visions bombarded her mind and made her clutch her temples in agony—rivers of black snaking across white plains, wild eyes and blood-stained teeth. She curled on her side, laying in her own shame. Her failure. She hadn't saved them, and she couldn't save Cat.

Rose vaguely registered two silhouettes hovering over her. If they were talking to her, she couldn't hear them. She didn't know how long she laid there crying before she felt hands underneath her, but it wasn't long enough to wash away her sins. She was carried back to the Homestead—she knew that much—but she didn't know by whom. Rose shut her eyes to the world and refused to open them.

The ground softened underneath her, and she felt like she was sinking into her own grave. Wherever she was, it didn't smell like wet grass or death, more like sun-warmed earth and ripe vegetables. A hand soothed her curls as fingernails raked gently across her scalp. With each caress, Rose came back to herself, though she still refused to open her eyes and face her palpable failures.

Somewhere nearby she caught the hiss of whispers, and this time her body did not give her the mercy of temporary deafness. She recognized the gentle lilt of Anil's voice. "Cat is gone."

A long, resigned sigh preceded the deep gruff of Alby's response. "Poor bastard. Get him in the ground before the vultures find him. I'll tell the others."

Rose squeezed her eyes tighter, willing the words away, and the hand in her hair reached instead for her face, tracing the arch of her brow down the sweep of her jaw. A single tear puddled in the hollow of her nose until a thumb wiped it away. It was the last thing she remembered before she escaped into total blackness.

* * *

She awoke to warm skin and apricot shades behind her eyelids. For once, Rose didn't feel smothered upon waking, and she relished a tip-to-toe stretch that energized every muscle. She sat up on her elbows and opened her eyes. She could tell she was in the Homestead, but she must have been in one of the Keepers' rooms because only they had their own. There was a shelf on the wall with a couple of random tools, some of Chuck's whittled handiwork, and a few bottles. Aside from a pair of wrinkled clothes and dirty shoes, there wasn't much else in the way of possessions.

Rose was on a cot with a balled-up sweatshirt for a pillow and a straw-blonde boy slumped over, asleep on a stool at her bedside. His mouth was cracked open, breathing softly onto a hand tucked under his cheek. His other arm was draped over her hips like a seatbelt. Rose ruffled his hair, and Newt sat up with a start.

"Hi," she said with a shallow smile.

"Hi." He rubbed sleep from the corners of his eyes and looked out the window. "What time do you think it is?"

Rose glanced behind her to the sun-soaked green and wrinkled her nose. "Afternoon maybe?"

Newt sat up and stretched his arms back over his head until they both heard a light pop, but then he returned his full attention to her. "How are you feeling?"

"Okay, I guess. I'm sorry about everything, Newt. I should have listened. I shouldn't have gone in there. I don't know what happened. It was like another me out there remembering something I don't actually remember."

He put a hand over Rose's and squeezed. With a nod, he said slowly, "Yeah, that was bloody weird."

Without warning, they both started laughing, strange peals that echoed off the walls and bordered a bit on the deranged, but at least it staved off the tears Rose wanted to shed. One stubborn droplet managed to make it through, and she smeared it across her face with the back of her hand.

"I just wanted to help Cat so bad. For some reason, I really thought I could, you know? How stupid is that? I'm so full of shit."

They both sobered. Newt did not let go of her hand. "You're not stupid, you're green."

Rose hung her head. "I know I didn't even know him that well. Why am I so upset?"

"It's your first time seeing death. Gets easier, I hate to bloody say it."

Rose knew she had seen death before, lots of it. If the white in her hair and the scar on her neck told her anything, she might even have had a front row seat, but that wasn't it—at least, that wasn't all of it. There was something more simmering beneath the surface, the knowledge that if this had happened anywhere but the Glade, Cat could have been saved. Rose didn't know how she knew this, but she knew it with certainty. The Creators could send up wax paper and lycra shorts, but they wouldn't send up life-saving medicine. They chose not to save Cat, and that Rose couldn't forgive.

"Did they bury him?" she asked.

"I think so. Want to go over?"

Rose nodded and the two of them headed downstairs. She found the main floor surprisingly empty. She thought she might find at least the Track-hoes mourning inside, but there was no one. Outside was even more shocking. The Glade was alive with activity. Under the late afternoon sun, boys worked the same as always, maybe a little quieter, but they were drenched in sweat and brown with dust.

"Did Thomas go into the Maze?" Rose asked with amazement.

"All the Runners did, I think. Not much they could get done by the time they went in, I imagine, but I guess it's not really about that."

Even the Track-hoes were busy in the Gardens, though the Orchard was noticeably empty. Newt hadn't been joking when he said the Gladers had gotten used to death—they had hardly skipped a beat.

Newt waved to his fellow Track-hoes as they passed, and Rose said, "You should be with them. Zart could probably really use you."

He shrugged one shoulder. "Those blokes'll be all right. I'd rather pay my respects for now. I didn't get to go to the funeral either."

So he had stayed with her the whole time… Rose wondered for a minute what the Glade would be like without Newt. Somehow he seemed to hold everyone here together; he was holding her together right now.

She gave him a grateful smile before lacing her fingers through his. His calloused hand was a welcome feeling from the last one that had held hers, and Rose held it tighter to dispel the memory. Newt looked surprised, but he didn't remove his hand as they entered the Deadheads.

The air had always been thick in there, but today it was cloying. It smelled of overturned earth and finality, and rancid notes from Cat's rotting leg lingered above all of it. Rose felt stinging bile at the back of her throat again but tamped it back down, not that she had anything left to throw up anyway.

Cat's grave was unmistakable. Someone had wet the soil, probably to make it a little easier to dig, and muddy tracks trailed away from the lumpy rectangle like tear stains. A haphazard cross had been tacked into the ground as Anil, who sat crossed-legged beside the grave, hammered his chisel carefully into the wedge of sandstone Rose had noticed yesterday. She should have known this was coming—Anil obviously had.

The _tap-tap-tap_ of the chisel echoed in the emerald cavern loud enough that Rose wanted to cover her ears. She stared at Anil's back, hunched with purpose, as his muscles twitched. In an effort to stop the horrendous chiseling, Rose said, "You knew he was going to die."

The Keeper did not look up from his work but answered, "Yes."

"How?"

The chisel finally stilled. "I have buried enough of us. I know death."

A flare of anger ignited inside Rose, replacing the bitter sadness that had been there since morning. "You could have said something."

Anil swiveled around, still sitting, and appraised her placidly like a living human was something he had never seen before. "I did."

With a long exhale, Rose remembered Clint's visit, his uncomfortable twitching as he entered the place where he had realized his patient would ultimately rest. Cat's fate had been sealed yesterday, and yet Clint and Jeff had carried on in spite of it. Rose's angered cooled in favor of a blossoming respect for the two Med-jacks. They might be two teenage boys with no experience whatsoever, but they had treated Cat the best they could until the very end. That was worth something.

"Do you mind if I just take a minute?" she asked of Newt, and he nodded and knocked Anil on the shoulder to motion him out.

Only when Rose had the Deadheads to herself did she realize she didn't know what she was doing. She couldn't remember visiting anyone else's grave, and she had no idea what the proper etiquette was, but she still felt like she owed the kid something.

"Hey, Cat," she said with a bit of embarrassment. "I'm sorry I couldn't help you, but I hope you know I tried. Maybe Anil is right, and this is just a new beginning for you. Wherever you go, I hope it's better than here. You deserve it."

Rose stood in awkward silence, alone with a pile of dirt and a body buried somewhere beneath it. It seemed a cruel joke that Cat, the lithe and lively Cat who could fight with grace and smile with ease, was down there in some hateful box. Rose thought of the one comfort she had, the memory of a melody that played every night for her in her head, and she offered it to Cat as a final apology.

As she hummed, Rose heard footsteps behind her. She expected Anil or Newt, but instead Minho's broad frame joined her. His chest rose and fell quickly as he must have just returned from the Maze. Sweat shimmered across his neck and arms. His eyes were fixed on the sloppy cross.

Without ceremony, he interrupted her tune. "There are lyrics to that."

"There are?"

"Yeah, you used to sing them."

In the Maze, the Before Rose, she realized. Whatever this song was, it had meant as much to her previous self as it did to her current one.

"Tell me," she said.

"I'm not singing, so put it out of your head, Greenie," he scolded. Instead, Minho cleared his throat and recited the words with the same cool confidence he said just about everything. "I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away, I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay, wastin' time."

Rose's lips parted as she stared at his profile.

"That's all I know," Minho snapped.

It was all she needed to hear. With just those words, the whole song came surging back in a lovely mature soprano that definitely wasn't her own dreadful alto. _Love_. She felt love—and peace—in those words. Rose was lighter than air. She wept, but this time had nothing to do with Cat's death; it didn't even have to do with sadness. For one brief moment, though she did not know her full name nor her hometown nor anything about her family, Rose felt whole.

She flung her arms around Minho's neck and hugged him tightly. She pressed her cheek into his shoulder and felt the steady undulation of his lungs. He did not hug her back or even move, but Rose needed him to know how grateful she was for this gift.

"Thank you," she whispered into his shirt before she let go and headed back into the Glade where Newt waited.

Dinner was rather sparse and decidedly tasteless, though it was hard to tell if that was Frypan's cooking or just the way the day had gone. Everyone at her table, even Minho, took an interest in her well-being, checking to be sure she was coping all right. The truth was now that she had her song back, she felt better. Cat's death still ached, still shocked her to her core, but a real piece of the original Rose had fallen into place, and, strange as it sounded, she didn't feel as lonely as she had, even in a place full of people.

Thomas walked Rose home, where they sat as usual staring off into the woods. Rose sang her song to him, every word that she could now recall with perfect clarity, and even though she could tell she was horribly tone deaf, Thomas listened with a smile.

"That's, like, the first nice thing that's happened here. Well, second," he amended with a glance at her lips. Rose laughed and rolled her eyes.

The sun was setting, and with its departure, Rose knew the galaxy would appear. She didn't want to see it. Though the song had helped her heal, it could not erase the horror of Cat's leg from her memory. The same vibrant colors, the same vast expanse of hopelessness.

Thomas stood to leave and Rose grabbed his arm. "Stay," she said, surprising the both of them. "I don't want to be alone tonight."

"If you're sure," Thomas replied.

She nodded and took his hand, leading him into her hut. Though she only had her hammock, Rose directed Thomas to the other end where he helped her take it down from the ceiling. They spread it out in the middle of the floor like a picnic blanket, and Rose laid on her side. Thomas remained standing, his eyes watching her carefully. They held each other's gazes a long while before she said, "It's okay, Thomas. Please."

Her begging brought him to her side, and he laid down flat on his back, her back to him. Not that she was going to tell him the whole truth of her memory of the two of them from the Before, but if Thomas knew the way he had laid with her on their last shared bed, he would cringe at how awkward this was.

"It's cold," Rose said. It wasn't really, but she felt a frost in her marrow knowing that galaxy pulsated ominously above her.

After a moment, she heard a rustle, the scratch of pebbles grating against dirt and fabric rubbing against fabric. Heat flooded her as did anticipation. Thomas rolled on his side, his body molding to hers. She felt every pressure point keenly: his chest against her spine, his hips against her backside, his knees behind her knees. In a moment, his arm snaked over her waist and cinched the two of them together.

"Is this okay?" he asked, but she could tell from the escalating rush of hot breath against her neck that he knew it was.

It would be so easy just to melt into him. Rose knew she had once, and with just a brush of his fingers, she knew she could again. She could forget everything for a while, be undone and primal and not care about a thing. She felt his hands twitch against her stomach, and if she didn't stop them now, she never would, no matter how dangerous it could be.

Before they could reach the point of no return, Rose reached up and grabbed Thomas' hand. From the way his breaths slowed, he understood. He pressed his lips against the back of her neck and nuzzled his nose along its arc.

"Goodnight, Rose."

"Goodnight, Thomas."

 _And goodbye, Cat_ , she thought as she closed her eyes.

* * *

It wasn't a pearl this time, it was a diamond. It was small but beautifully cut, and when Rose held it up toward the wan light outside the grotto, it refracted a hundred tiny shards of yellow around her and across her skin. She squinted as she pulled it closer for inspection, and inside she found another memory, this one more alive than Rose had ever felt.

She saw two pairs of feet, one much smaller than the other but both pairs delicate and feminine in their own way. Bare legs draped over weather-beaten boards that bowed up at the end, defying the ancient square-headed nails that clung for purchase into the seaweed-studded supports below. Water lapped around the ankles of the longer pair of legs and taunted the shorter pair that couldn't yet reach.

The song was back, and this time Rose heard the woman's voice clearer than she had when she was awake. It was closer, next to her, as though it was being sung directly into her ear. Effervescent and delicate, like a spear of sunshine through a cloudy day. Rose was enveloped by that voice and carried away on its melody.

"Sittin' on the dock of the bay, wastin' time…"

One of the long legs kicked up a shower of water that broke up the song with a chandelier of crystals raining from heaven.

There was laughter and then darkness.

* * *

 _In keeping with Dashner's system of naming the Subjects after famous scientists, I have done the same for all of my original characters. A Newt hug and kiss to anyone who can figure out after whom our dearly departed Cat was named. Rest in peace, my feline friend._


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven**

 _Moon Yirang (ft. Hoody) - Aphasia_

"Morning," Newt said as soon as Rose opened the door to her room. The blonde was leaning against the wall with a gentle smile on his face. "Last day as a Greenie, Greenie. Excited?"

"Mm, you bet," Rose said with a languid arch of her back.

Thomas shuffled out a few steps behind her, his hand scratching at the back of his tousled hair. "Morning, Newt. Looking for me?"

"Tommy?" Newt's eyes widened and then narrowed as he looked at the two of them and then at the flattened hammock on the hut's floor. "Bloody hell, you slintheads. What did you do?"

"Nothing, Mom," Rose teased. "I didn't want to be alone last night, so Thomas stayed to keep me company."

"That it?" Newt sounded dubious.

Rose nodded firmly. "That's it. What are you so worked up about? I slept with you too, yesterday."

It was Thomas' turn for wide eyes, and Newt's cheeks dappled under his eyes. "Well, don't bloody say it like that."

"Exactly. Now, can we move on?" she said. "I have huge news. I saw my mother last night."

"Your mother?" Newt repeatedly, almost reverently.

"Well, just her legs," Rose amended, "but I heard her, too. She was singing to me. We were sitting on a dock, and I could just feel her, you know? I have a mother! Had. Have? I don't know, but she's beautiful, and she loves me."

Newt embraced her briefly as he murmured into her ear, "That's wonderful. I'm happy for you."

As soon as the blonde let her go, she felt Thomas' arm encircle her shoulders and press her to his side. "Lucky," he said. "I only ever get nightmares or nothing at all. What I wouldn't give to know my mother."

The trio walked to breakfast together, Thomas with his arm still around Rose's shoulder. Since Chuck was late this morning, Thomas scooted alongside Minho and motioned for Rose to take Chuck's empty seat across from Alby. Somehow it was weird to sit next to the man with whom she had just shared a bed, and she felt like more eyes than usual were on her.

Alby offered Rose a rare quarter-smile—no teeth, of course. "By the time the Runners get back, you'll be a card-carrying Glader just like the rest of these shanks. What say you to that, she-bean?"

Rose pursed her lips. "Good that."

Now an actual smile with a flash of pearly whites from the Man of the Thousand Scowls.

"What do you mean?" said Minho from the other end of the table. "She's already just as much of a shuck-face as everyone else here."

Rose sighed. "You are literally the worst person in the world."

"You only know forty people," Minho scoffed. "Can't be that bad."

"I could know a million, and you'd still be the worst."

"Maybe," he conceded, "but at least I have beautiful hair."

Rose dropped her fork so she could lean forward and glower at him. Her cheeks flamed up at the memory of their argument in her room, of the stupid things she had said and the stupider thing they might nearly have done. "Is that all you got out of our conversation the other day?"

"Yes."

 _All he got out of it_ , she grumbled to herself. _He damn near kissed me, and all he remembers is his stupid beautiful hair_. _Arrogant bastard._

"What are you fighting about now?" Thomas asked with a groan.

"Nothing!" they shouted in stereo, and it was Thomas's turn to frown.

"You two are like children," Alby observed.

The newly-arrived Chuck shrugged a shoulder. "At least it makes breakfast fun."

"It's annoying," Thomas countered.

Minho stood up unceremoniously and punched his Runner lightly in the arm. "Don't criticize your boss. Now come on, shuck-head, get a move on. The Maze ain't going to run itself."

"I barely ate anything," Thomas complained.

"Not my fault you slept in."

Newt shot Rose and Thomas a stern look but wisely said nothing.

Reluctantly, Thomas stood up, shoving as many bites into his mouth as he possibly could, and Rose stole a moment to grab his hand. It did not go unnoticed.

"Where's my goodbye kiss?" Minho demanded.

Rose sneered and whirled around to the table behind her. "Hey, Gally! Minho's looking for you."

The Keeper of the Builders looked up expectantly only to see the sour grimace of the other Keeper. Their table rang with laughter before Minho grumbled, "I told you she was already a total shuck-face."

Satisfied, Rose turned her attention back to Alby. "So what am I doing today?"

"Seeing as you didn't get much of a schoolin' in Med-jacking yesterday, I set you up with Clint. He'll expect you at the Med-hut this morning."

The silence that always befell the table after Minho left deepened exponentially at the mention of the Med-jacks. Though the Gladers seemed to be experts at moving on, it was comforting to see the loss of Cat still resonated.

Rose didn't want to go back to the Med-hut so soon, but if she was going to become an official Glader today after all, she needed to toughen up. She nodded and prayed the new Greenie would show up sooner rather than later so at least she could have a distraction.

After they finished, Newt walked her over to their de facto hospital in a surprisingly somber mood. As much as Cat's death weighed on her, it must have been worse for a guy who had known him much longer. Rose wasn't sure when Cat had arrived in the Glade—if he'd come up as part of the original group or joined later—but if he had been there since the beginning, it would have been all the more depressing.

Halfway there though, Newt surprised her. "You remember my advice from the other day?"

 _Don't get carried away._

He was still thinking about Thomas in her room. Rose narrowed her eyes. "I'm not stupid, Newt."

"It's not about stupid, Rose. I know what it is to feel lonely, and I know the bloody daft things we do when we're looking to escape it."

She realized just how right Newt was. Last night, if she had an ounce less willpower, she would have given in to Thomas' heat just to forget the horrors of yesterday. Rose had felt his rising passion in just the flick of his fingertip, and all it would have taken to change everything was for her to let it happen.

They said nothing else until they reached the Med-hut, where Newt left her with a soft goodbye before he headed toward the Gardens.

Rose paused at the other side of the door, afraid of the carnage she might find on the other side, the remnants of sickness and death, the detritus of impending failure and hopelessness. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath and entered.

The room in perfect order, as though nothing untoward had ever happened there. The cot was made with fresh, unstained sheets. Every bottle and book had found an orderly home on the shelves. The counters were clear of everything except a neat stack of bandages and Clint's medical bag.

The Keeper of the Med-jacks stood in the corner of the room flipping through a dusty book with vintage illustrations of the human body. He turned around when he heard her and snapped the book shut. It had to have been her imagination, but his hair seemed to be peppered with more gray than before.

"Morning, Greenie," he said as he put the book away and dusted his hands on his pants. "Ready to give this thing another try?"

"I guess so."

"Look, yesterday wasn't the best, but you came in spite of it, and even though you're a pretty shuck listener, you helped."

"I didn't do anything except get in the way and make a scene."

"Yeah, you did that too, but I've seen a lot shanks die, Greenie. I'm not proud to say that, but I saw Cat before you were here and after. You helped. Sometimes being a Med-jack's not about saving lives so much as it's about making sure they die a little easier."

It wasn't exactly what Rose wanted to hear, but for some reason, it made her feel better.

She spent the better part of the morning learning her way around the Med-hut, where supplies were kept and for what they were used. She learned about the Grief Serum, which ensured Runners lived through the vicious sting of a Griever attack, and about how some of the other Gladers had died in the past. She also learned about a few of the amazing rescues the Med-jacks had made, including Newt's recovery from his accident when he was a Runner.

It was almost mid-day when she heard it, a shrill scream that made her cover her ears and jam her eyes shut as though closing them would block out more sound.

Clint smiled. "Looks like you're officially a Glader, Rose."

Just like that. Before, hearing her name from anyone other than Chuck or Thomas had felt like a treat to be savored; it was almost surreal to have her name back after a month without it.

Clint held the door for her, and when she stepped outside, Rose found the entire Glade trotting into the center of the green, all congregating around the squealing metal Box.

"Come on or you'll miss the best part," Clint said as he trotted ahead of her, and she picked up her speed to match.

They joined the circle and found the others jockeying for the best position to squint into the dark hole. Newt sidled up alongside her and rested his elbow on her shoulder. "What do you think, Rose?"

"I don't know what to think," she said as she stared into the gaping black eye of the Box.

Newt smiled. "Wait until you see Gally. Nothing he likes better than giving Greenies a crash-course in the Glade."

"Almost topside, Newt," one of the others called, and Newt gave Rose a shrug.

"Duty calls, milady." He walked to the edge of the Box, and with a final resounding clank, the metal stopped. He jumped down into the darkness, and from her vantage, Rose could see nothing else. She heard a bit of shuffling, some general panicked shouts, and the clatter of something falling down.

After another moment of commotion, Newt's voice boomed back up, "We got ourselves another wee shank for our collection. Welcome to the Glade, Greenie."

There was a communal groan intermixed with a disappointed hiss. One of the Gladers complained, "Still only one girl for all of us?"

"And that slinthead Thomas already claimed her," someone else lamented.

"Shut your traps before I shut 'em for you," Rose threatened with a fist for punctuation, and though the boys laughed, they left her alone in favor of heckling their newest arrival.

Gally leaned down into the Box and hoisted up a young boy about Chuck's age by the collar. "Caught myself a little Greenie," Gally laughed. "Wish I could throw him back though. Doesn't look much for Building."

The kid had a perfect alabaster moon-face, as though he'd never seen the sun, and one large mole by his mouth as the only crater to mar his skin. He had dramatic brown eyes, nearly as big as Rose's own, but they were fringed by the longest lashes she had ever seen on a boy. The kid was soft all over, not as pudgy as Chuck, but it was clear he hadn't lived a life of hard-labor up to this point.

"You got a name, klunkhead?" Gally asked. The boy's bottom lip wobbled, but he managed a quick nod. "Go on, out with it."

"Max," he said, his young voice cracking on the verge of tears.

"Not that it matters anyway," Gally said. "You're a Greenie now, right, shanks?"

The rest of the Gladers cheered and clapped, and with each boom of their thunderous voices, Max winced.

It occurred to Rose that she didn't remember anything like this when she arrived. She had woken up in the Med-hut without a word of greeting, not that she would have reacted much better with a reception as awful as this one.

Gally put Max under his wing, his arm wringing the kid's neck as he jerked him around the Glade before depositing him in front of the sufficiently stern-looking Alby, who began his Rule recitation.

Behind her, Newt tossed crates up from the Box and passed them down an assembly line of Gladers.

"Hand me the last one, man," Winston said, reaching down into the Box.

"Nah, this one's for me," Newt said as he pulled himself up over the metal lip along with a black rectangular box.

"Get something good?" Rose asked as she lent him a hand.

"We'll see."

There was something hidden behind Newt's smile that made Rose perk up.

He turned toward the Homestead with his prize, and with nothing left to do at the Box, Rose accompanied him. She gave one last look and a small wave to the bleary-eyed newcomer as he was jostled between the Builders and Alby.

"You know, I never asked and no one ever told me," she began, "but how did I come up? I don't remember any of it."

Newt's smile faded immediately and he inhaled deeply. "That's because you came up dead."

Though he had practically whispered them, his words seemed to ring around the Walls. Rose took a long moment to process what he had said, yet she couldn't believe she'd heard him correctly. "What?"

"If not dead, damn near. Least that's what we all thought. Clint couldn't find a bloody pulse on ya. And there was something else," Newt added. "It's better if you just see it."

Rose's mind reeled. She'd been dead—actually dead. And Clint had conspicuously left out her spontaneous resurrection from his tales of Med-jack heroism. Endless questions skittered in a frantic procession across her brain. Where did she come from? Who killed her? Why?

 _Why? Why? Why?_

Newt led Rose back to the Med-hut where Clint already waited. The Second-in-Command nodded toward Rose and said, "Time to show her what she came up with."

Clint reached into the highest cabinet and rifled around blindly with one hand. Rose could see a few dusty cruets of amber liquids and an empty pill bottle until the Keeper extracted one small black box. Its hinged lid squeaked open like an oyster reluctant to give up its pearl. Clint handed it to Rose, and she pulled out an empty syringe with a crumpled note.

In flowing script, it read: "Use if you decide you want her to live."

There was a long pause as Rose held the paper in her hand until she noticed it trembling.

"What the fuck?" she shouted, startling both boys. "Did anyone else ever come up like this?"

"No," Clint replied.

"What the fuck!"

Rose considering smashing something—anything. She thought of the Grievers calling her name, the rose bush planted deep in the Deadheads, the crate of skimpy clothes she received from the Box. And now this. The Creators had to have been confident the Gladers would have wanted to save her considering all the other troubles they'd gone to, but what if the boys hadn't? What if they didn't want to save Rose or simply couldn't? Would the Creators have just sent up a replacement after her? Why risk something they seemed to have so great a stake in? More questions bombarded Rose's brain, all without answer.

Dead. She'd been dead. But whatever had been in the syringe had brought her back to life. Could it have saved some of the others that now lay a few feet below them? Could it have saved Cat?

Rose remembered screaming to those sadists in the center of the Glade yesterday, begging for this exact miracle for her friend, and she'd received nothing. Why was she special where Cat was expendable? Who could do something so monstrous to her—to all of them? 

"Tell me what happened," Rose said with practiced control this time as she sat on the bed where Cat had died—where she had also died.

Clint leaned against the counter with his arms crossed. "Not much to tell, really. You came up in the Box same as the rest, only you weren't moving and I couldn't find a pulse. We were about to give you up for the Deadheads when Alby found that box in with the others. I injected you, but you didn't react. We brought you back here, and you didn't move a muscle for hours, but I think you remember waking up but good."

"Yeah, I remember that all right."

Flashbacks of the Doors closing, of Minho pinning her down and carrying her back, of strange faces gleaming in firelight overwhelmed her. If she wasn't already sitting down, she would have.

Newt joined her on the cot, his special prize now nestled at his feet. "Hey, it's okay. We did choose to save ya after all."

"Yeah," Rose said with a tight grin, "thanks for that. Somebody could have mentioned it earlier."

Newt patted her knee and, after a moment, stood back up. "Well, now you know. Don't let it bother you too much because there's no shucking point worrying about something you'll never remember. On the bright side, there's not much left in the way of secrets from us."

"Except what's in that case," she said, grateful for Newt's distraction.

"Everything in good time here, Rose," he said as he yanked the box away. "Don't you know that by now?"

She collapsed back onto the bed. "Everyone here is so obnoxious."

"Could be worse," Newt said, "I could be Minho."

Rose's face switched automatically to her pucker.

Just then, one of the Slicers leaned in the door with a sheepish grin on his face.

"Oh, who now?" Clint demanded with a frown.

"That'd be Ye," the Slicer said.

"Again? I just patched that slinthead up two days ago."

The Slicer shrugged and headed back to work, and Clint pushed up from the counter with a heavy sigh. "Make yourself useful and grab that bag, Rose."

The Med-jack pair said goodbye to Newt and his mystery case and headed over to the Blood House where the bald-headed Slicer Ye was sitting outside on a stool. Blood dripped copiously from his left palm, yet he smiled with all the gusto of a deranged clown. Rose noted his heavily bandaged left forearm, and she could only imagine how that must have looked to repair.

"Regular as clockwork, these shuck-faces," Clint said to her over his shoulder as he knelt in front of Ye and examined the gash. The cut was clean, from thumb to pinky, and not deep enough to expose muscle but deep enough to require stitches. Clint opened his bag and pulled out a small bottle the color of watered down honey. "When they're extra shuck-faced, I like to clean 'em up with this."

Ye's smile melted into a frown, and he started to squirm in his seat.

"Time to take your medicine, klunkhead," Clint ordered as he grasped Ye's wrist firmly in his hand and pulled the Slicer's arm straight.

Ye's fingers twitched in anticipation before Clint uncorked the bottle and dumped the contents over his wound. The Slicer stamped his foot and howled in pain as the liquid sluiced over the cut. Rose smelled the same notes of corn and sugar as she had in Frypan's famed saucy-sauce.

With the wound clean, the Keeper of the Med-jacks had Rose pat it dry and then produced a match for her to heat a needle until the match burned out. She watched in both amazement and disgust as Clint pinched the flaps of Ye's flesh together and, with the newly threaded needle, sewed the wound closed. He wrapped the Slicer's hand in more bandages and gave the kid a knock on the head with the butt of his palm.

Clint scowled and said, "Do something like that again, and I'll sew your hands behind your back next time."

They packed up to head back to the Homestead when Rose spotted the new Greenie ankle-deep in the animal pens, tottering toward the fertilizer heap with two buckets full of sludge from the troughs. A handful of Gladers leaned over the edge of the fences and barked orders at Max every which way he turned.

"Piss off, would ya?" Rose said as she shooed them away with her hand.

"Barely a couple of hours removed from a Greenie herself, and Legs is already bossing us around," quipped Eli with his usual shining grin.

"Damn straight," she retorted and trudged into the pen to grab one of the buckets from the new kid. With a gentle smile, she said, "I'm Rose, last month's Greenie."

"Max," he replied with a grateful nod.

Together, the two newest Gladers headed toward the woods, buckets sloshing beside them. The other boys waited on the outskirts, heckling Max with a chorus of animal snorts and jeers.

"Sorry about these guys," Rose said. "They love their hazing. Just don't eat any crackers if they offer them. Anyone give you the tour yet?"

Max nodded. "I guess. The one with, like, the mean eyebrows jerked me around and shouted a lot of stuff. He said I'm not supposed to ask questions."

Rose let out one booming laugh. "That'd be Gally. Thick as these Walls and just as impossible. Forget him, how are you feeling about all of this?"

Max's moon-face turned to her, and Rose could see a fresh pool of tears in each eyes. "Sorry, I'm sorry," he said fighting back sniffles. "I'm, like, crazy scared. I don't know nothing and no one, not even me. I'm sorry I'm such a huge baby."

Rose remembered that feeling well, remembered the weight of that fear driving her toward those cavernous jaws in the Walls as she hoped for salvation or enlightenment or both. She supposed Max might have been faring better than she had on her first day.

She smiled at him. "Then you'll fit in here perfectly. Give it a little while, kid. They're not all total morons, just most of them."

They were almost at the compost pile when Rose saw it, a flash of silver whipping through the grass with the agility of a snake. She opened her mouth to shout at Max, but it was too late. As soon as the thing brushed Max's foot, he squealed and lost his grip on his bucket, sending the putrid shower of animal waste and rotten food raining down on Rose.

She stood there rigid, coffee-colored filth dribbling down the sides of face and staining every inch of her.

Max hadn't even noticed. He was rolling in the grass, clutching his foot and whining. "Ow, oh man, ouch! What the heck was that thing?"

Rose couldn't respond. She couldn't even move. But she could hear hysterical laughter encircling her. One by one, more faces joined the crowd around her, all red-faced as they struggled to catch their breath. She might have been embarrassed if she wasn't so shocked.

"Beetle blades," Winston managed through the thick fog of his amusement. "You dumb shank, you ain't supposed to touch 'em!"

"It touched me," the kid protested, but Winston was too busy laughing to listen. "Honest, I didn't touch it! I'm so sorry, Rose, really! It was an accident."

With only a single hand of warning raised, she stalked off to the showers with what was left her dignity dripping into the grass.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve**

 _VAV – Dance With Me_

 _A/N: Merry Christmas! As a present, here's one of my favorite chapters a few days early!_

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"We got Legs!" one of the Builders crowed as Rose rounded the bend.

The sun had set, and the fire was already roaring above their heads. Somebody whistled long and loud into the darkness.

"Never thought I'd live to see the day where I would thank the Creators," murmured Winston as he leaned over one of his Slicer's shoulders to get a better look.

Rose had waited to join the bonfire until the sun was down in the hopes that the others wouldn't be able to see her well, but it was pointless. She gave the group of slobbering idiots the biggest eye roll she could manage, but no one was looking at her face, so she lowered her hand to her thighs and flipped them off instead. They laughed, but it was enough to break up the staring.

Of course, Rose had lamented her wardrobe decision, but she had had no choice. After Max had saturated her favorite clothes in the filth of two dozen animals, Rose had reviewed all three of her pitiful options and ultimately slipped into the delicate lace of the white dress. It was strange how wearing a simple swath of fabric could make Rose feel outside of this place all together. It was like some vestige of an extinct culture or another world entirely. She felt alien and… pretty.

Fitted around the chest and breezy just above her knees, in another life, Rose might have chosen this dress for a date. Instead, she wore it to celebrate the arrival of another poor sucker in a twisted puzzle for a purpose she could not understand.

Thomas muscled his way through the cluster of Gladers with parted lips and hungry eyes. "Wow" was all he managed. For a moment, Rose thought he might kiss her—even hoped he might ignore them all and just do it—but he settled for a quick hug and a stealthy feel of the hem of her dress.

"Don't get used to it," Rose breathed into his ear, and as her punishment, Thomas let the tip of his finger flick teasingly up the back of her thigh.

Gally sauntered over with his arms crossed and one brow raised. Since he had found her with Thomas, the Builder hadn't talked to Rose, barely even acknowledged her at breakfast that morning, and she was beginning to wonder if he would ever talk to her again. She could sense the edge of his anger in the twitch of his right eye, but something drew him forward in spite of it.

"Well, well, well. Nice of you to show up, Princess."

Rose narrowed her eyes. "Aren't you ever going to use my name?"

The Keeper of the Builders licked his bottom lip and nodded to the dirt circle behind him. "Tell you what, _Legs_ , you wrestle me in my ring tonight and win, I'll call you whatever you like."

"I'd rather you don't call me at all. Ever."

A couple of the boys whooped and jostled Gally between them as the Keeper and Rose exchanged reluctant smiles. It was a truce of some kind, and even if they had more to resolve, she had to admit, her heart was lighter for it.

Rose pushed the Builder boys aside and glanced around. "I thought this party was supposed to be about the new Greenie, not the old one. Where's Max?"

"When that pudgy little Greenbean looks that good in a dress, maybe I'll care," said Eli.

As if on cue, Newt's blonde mop emerged from the shadows with the flawless lunar whiteness of the new kid along with a delighted Chuck.

"Holy klunk, Rose," the young Slopper said, obliging as always. "You're just so pretty!"

She pinched her friend's cheek and grinned at him.

One look at the Greenie's tremulous eyebrows, however, and Rose could tell Max had gone out of his way to avoid her arrival. His eyes were firmly downcast as he mumbled apology after apology.

"Hey," she said, giving Max a light punch in his shoulder, "no worries. I got a shower out of it, and besides, I don't think any of these lousy perverts here are going to hold it against you. Just promise me you'll try to get the stains out if you can—those clothes help keep the nicknames at bay."

"Yeah right, Legs!" shouted Gally over her shoulder, and she waved him off.

"Of course, anything," Max replied through a flurry of nods.

"I'll help him," Chuck assured, and Rose had no doubt that in a day or two she might be back in the safety of her old duds.

Soon, Gally and his minions whisked the unsuspecting Greenie off to make him chug Frypan's foul brew while the others ribbed him mercilessly. Newt watched the boy sputter on the drink and spurt a geyser of it a few feet in the air, and he smiled. "So, what do you think, Rose? Tommy says Cook. I've got two lunches' worth on Slopper."

"For what?"

"Where the new Greenie will end up," Thomas clarified.

"How should I know?" she responded. "Nobody even assigned me my job yet."

Not that Rose wanted to face that outcome anyway—she already knew her position would not be the one she'd been hoping for—but without a title, she felt purposeless. She was the Girl in the Glade, but she wanted to be more than that. Newt's words from her first night had never left her—she was still waiting for this place to make something out of her, and she knew whatever that was, it would be her defining purpose. She was different for a reason.

"About that," Newt began with a wary tone, "Alby's looking for you. I think he's over by the Kitchen."

 _May as well get this over with_ , she thought as she headed over to meet her fate. She found their stern leader leaning against the side of the building. His eyes flicked to Rose, though, unlike the other boys, Alby did a good job of concealing whatever he was thinking.

"Well, at least it's not those shuck shorts," he said at last.

"Thanks, I guess?"

He studied her with a cock of his head. "Yeah, you could probably Med-jack in that get-up."

Rose sucked in a breath. "I take it you picked my job today, huh?"

"Were you expecting something else? Slicer, maybe?" he teased.

"Expecting? No."

"You still holdin' out to be a Runner." Alby didn't move save for his favored arm-fold and thousand-yard stare. He sounded like a disappointed father.

Rose mirrored his body language as she joined him against the wall. "I will be someday, Alby. And it won't be anyone's choice, probably not even mine."

"At least it's ours for now. While you took your sweet time in them showers, the Keepers decided, and that decision's final."

"Was it unanimous?"

Alby didn't answer.

They were still making decisions for her, but not for long. Though she hadn't heard the Grievers call her name in several days, Rose knew the Maze hadn't forgotten about her—the rose petals had revealed that much. It was just a matter of time before it was out of all their hands, final Council decision or not. The veil of perceived safety that shrouded the Glade was wearing dangerously thin, and even Alby's best efforts at law and order wouldn't be able to keep the monsters that lurked beyond the Walls at bay.

"Clint and Jeff were real impressed by you. Hell, so was I. I saw you with Cat." At the mention of Cat's name, they both closed their eyes, but Alby persisted. "Start to finish, you looked after the kid. Most importantly, you stood up for him. Even if the Creators couldn't give a klunk, you fought for him. I won't forget that."

Of all the jobs, truth be told, Rose had liked Med-jack the best, so while there was something to their system, it didn't change the fact that it ultimately wouldn't be their call to make. But Rose wouldn't argue either. Learning medical skills, however rudimentary from teenagers and some old books, would be valuable, so she wouldn't complain.

Rose nodded and pushed off the wall. "Thanks. I'll do my best."

"Hey, shuck-head," Alby called after her. When Rose turned around, he offered a half-smile, which gave a handsome softness to his stern features. "You look beautiful tonight."

"Slim it," she answered with a smile of her own and headed back into the wild displays of testosterone that encircled the fire.

Newt waited just where she'd left him, this time without Thomas or Chuck but with the curious addition of his mystery black case. He smiled at her broadly, that grin the most comforting one she could remember.

"Evening, Dr. Rosalind," he said with a tip of his head.

It was nice to her full name uttered by something that wasn't a mechanical nightmare, and her heart fluttered. In her best attempt to mimic his accent, Rose replied, "Mr. Newt."

The stilted formality, coupled with Rose's horrendous impersonation, made them crack up. There was something precious about Newt's laugh, like he rarely had a chance to use it, and Rose wished she could keep it going just to bring a little joy to the life of a guy who shouldered so much horror.

Instead, Newt sobered and presented the case to her. She quirked a brow and said, "Who's this for?"

"Don't be daft. It's for you, ya silly shank."

With a curious look at him first, Rose then ran her hands over the worn case. The leather at each corner had rolled away from its hard skeleton, and the tarnished handle squeaked as she brushed her fingers over it. The two latches on either end looked so stiff, Rose worried they might not give up their prize inside, but with a defiant click, she pried them open. Their rusty snap resonated within her, so habitual it was less memory and more a part of her. She eased open the clam shell and found a crushed red velvet lining cradling a well-loved violin.

Rose recognized the instrument, every part of it, could name each component as readily as a human limb, and in a way, they felt as much a part of her as her own appendages. _Scroll, neck, waist, bridge, f-holes, tail piece._

"I requested it," he said, his eyes never leaving her. "Can't believe the buggin' Creators actually sent it."

Rose didn't know what to say; she wasn't even sure she could form the words to thank him. All she could manage were two humongous eyes pooling with tears of gratitude, and even then, she couldn't manage to tear them away from the world's most beautiful present.

"I didn't get it so you would cry," Newt interjected. "I got it so you could play music and finally dance with me."

She laughed, which scattered her tears across her lashes and down the edges of her face. "Oh, good, I was worried someone here might do something nice for someone else without any ulterior motives."

"You haven't learned anything in a month, have you, Greenie?" he replied, wiping away her tears with the back of his finger.

Rose stuck out her tongue at her old nickname and then returned her attention to the gleaming spruce face of the violin. Her fingers danced across the wave of the bouts as she tried to tease forth memories from the wood. The firelight illuminated a worn carving in the tailpiece, two names: Bridget and below it, Daideó. She wondered who Bridget was and how the Creators had gotten their hands on her fiddle. Would she miss the elegant bloom of this varnished beauty? Was she even alive, or was she some girl in another Glade somewhere with no clue what she was missing?

The moment her hand grasped the neck of the instrument, Rose felt a jolt within her, as loud and jarring as the Wall doors creaking open in the morning. The feeling intensified as she slipped the bow between her thumb and forefinger and extracted both pieces from the case.

"What if I don't remember how to play them? Or I was completely terrible?" she blurted.

Newt shrugged. "Then I guess you'll have loads of time to practice before our next bonfire. May as well give her a go."

"I don't remember any songs."

But Rose wasn't sure she believed that. The longer she caressed the fiddle's neck, the more the fog in her mind lifted. She remembered nothing specific, but she didn't need to—her fingers remembered for her.

She tucked the chin rest under her chin and gripped the frog at the end of the bow. She brought the hairs to the strings and held them there. She could feel her fingers tremble—anticipation and fear as tight as the hairs of the bow themselves—and it wasn't until the bow accidentally touched one string with a loud squeal that Rose realized she'd been holding her breath.

All other noises in the Glade ground to a halt. She couldn't even hear the click and whir of the Grievers patrolling the Maze. Everything waited for Rose.

The first few glides over the fiddle were sharp and high, borderline metallic in their lamentations at Rose's lack of practice, but with just a few more passes, that hidden secret inside her unspooled and music flowed, literally flowed like honey from a split comb. She had no clue what she was playing, but the music came out all the same, up and down, tipping over and back in short and long glides, until her toe tapped along. Rose closed her eyes to see the melody, and for a few moments, it was just Rose and a fiddle—her fiddle now—resurrecting something magical.

She opened her eyes, and there was Newt, smiling from ear-to-ear. It was as warm as the varnish on the violin, as bright as the notes that spilled from her strings. She took a few steps toward him, and though she couldn't properly dance with a fiddle in her hand, she offered him a brief curtsey, which he returned with a bow of his head. They circled each other, spinning one direction and shifting abruptly with the next dip of the melody. Their backs pressed together as Newt braced against her and she braced against her fiddle. They laughed in time with the music as though their peals of laughter were accompanying instruments.

Around her, Rose heard the rhythmic thumps of boots and claps of hands as more boys picked up the tune. It wasn't a perfect rendition of whatever the song was—Rose's ears could plainly tell that—and yet, to her, it was resplendent, as close to heaven as she could hope for.

On their next circle, mid-way through, Newt tipped his head backward so his mouth was against her ear. "I told the Council you should be a Runner."

Rose's bow screeched to a halt across the strings as she spun around to wrap one arm around Newt's neck and plant a kiss on his cheek. It was lightning fast, but the damage was done. A shower of boos and hisses erupted around them, as much from the disappearance of the music as from the kiss.

"Thank you for this beautiful gift, Newt," she said, "and for believing in me."

"Don't get so bloody excited, nobody in the Council listened. The day Cat fell, I saw your feet tearing up the Glade, and I tried to tell Alby, but he wouldn't hear it—still won't—so don't expect anything."

So that's what the two had been arguing about under those secretive boughs.

"That part doesn't matter, not to me."

They held each other's gaze and refused to let go. Chaos was about to descend upon them, and they only had a few more seconds to appreciate the moment.

"That dress was made for you, Rose."

"I was thinking I might burn it after tonight."

"Don't," Newt said with an adamant shake of his head before he hugged her, his lips feathering beside her ear lobe. "Don't ruin it. I want one good memory out of this bloody klunk-hole."

Her breath was coming harder now. How could they have this huge field under an open sky and still have no air?

With one last tight smile and a half-nod, Rose packed up her fiddle to a boisterous choir of hecklers. But it didn't matter; she was floating on music notes suspended in mid-air. She was lighter than she had ever been, and nothing could bring her down.

Except Thomas' hard gaze. At the last bonfire, he had been all frost, but this time he was granite as he waited at the edge of the firelight.

"What's wrong?" Rose asked as she approached him.

"What's wrong? I don't know, maybe the girl I just spent the night with kissed another guy in front of the whole Glade."

"Keep your voice down," she commanded. "It wasn't like that. Newt just told me—"

Thomas shook his head as though he were shaking away her words themselves. "It doesn't matter. What am I supposed to think, Rose? You're dancing with other guys, joking with them, and you're wearing this dress."

"I got dressed up for you, you stupid slinthead!" Her voice thundered off the buildings, and instantly Rose regretted losing her temper. Every Glader watched them now. She tried to lower her voice, but she couldn't calm it. "And are you honestly telling me I can't _laugh_ with other guys? There are literally forty of you and one of me. You expect me to just stay locked up in my room waiting for you, Thomas? I thought you believed in me. I'm sorry I kissed Newt, but—"

Thomas grabbed Rose's cheeks and kissed her greedily, his lips smothering hers as his fingers knotted through her curls. There was a coldness in his mouth Rose wasn't used to, chilled by the icy flint of possession. Where she had fantasized about him kissing her in front of everybody a little bit ago, this wasn't about being swept up in their connection or enamored by her flirty dress—this was about territory.

Rose pushed off his chest and wrenched her face from his grip. Thomas looked at her in confusion until she reeled her hand back and slapped his cheek with full force. The sound was louder than her voice could have ever been, rebounding off the dark clouds scudding across the stars.

Without another word, Rose stalked off toward Gally and the other Builders, who had evidently still been torturing Max before the added entertainment. She wrenched a jar of saucy-sauce from the Keeper's hands and chugged the remaining half as quickly as she could, relishing its distracting burn.

Through a tight throat, she squeaked out, "There any more?"

Gally didn't try to hide his satisfied smile as he glanced back to his arch nemesis massaging his sore face and his bruised ego. The Keeper of the Builders wrapped his arm around Rose's neck and squeezed. "Anything for you, Rose."

He guided her to a picnic table dressed with a half dozen different drinks, and even in the dark, Rose knew exactly which one she wanted. Several small tumblers of crystal liquid winked devilishly, and Rose grabbed two and knocked them both back. Her head was already muddling delightfully but her annoyance wasn't receding. One look back at Thomas, and she needed a third drink, but as her hand closed around the glass, so did Gally's.

"Listen, I'm all for you sticking it to that klunk-for-brains, but you probably don't want to do that." Gally downed the tumbler instead, and Rose narrowed her eyes.

"Why is everyone here always trying to tell me what I can and can't do?" she muttered. Rose pushed past the Keeper and headed into the darkness.

The twisting flames made her head spin, and the cool blackness was her only respite. Even better, no idiot boys to make her feel like she was the reason for all their problems. The Glade was dark, but the Walls were darker, reminding her that, no matter what, they were trapped here with each other.

Rose stumbled forward and tripped over a small pile of stones. With a growl, she reached down and scooped the pebbles up, fingering the smooth rounds between her thumb and index finger before chucking one into the shadows.

"Stupid Thomas," she screamed.

Another stone. "Stupid Alby."

Another stone. "Stupid Creators."

"Ow," complained a voice from somewhere behind the ebony curtain. "Watch where you're pelting those damn things, shuck-face."

Rose blindly threw one more pebble as hard as she could before she teetered backwards onto her ass. "Stupid Minho!"

The Keeper of the Runners emerged from the deepest veil of the shadows and stood over her pathetic form, both hands on his hips. "You look like a real slinthead, you know that?"

"Don't just stand there, help a girl up."

"No way, you'll just throw more rocks at me. I'm safer with you down there." He sat down next to her with his legs tucked in front of him. "Besides, you don't look like you can stand up for klunk. Aren't you the same shank who dumped all my sauce out last time? What are you doing getting jacked up on it?"

"Oh good," Rose said, "another man to tell me what I can't do. I wish I had forty more just like you—oh wait, I do."

Minho lightly flicked the side of her head, and she scowled at him full strength. "What a shuck-face. I didn't say you couldn't do it. Yet again, you're not listening."

"Says the man who can't even decide if he likes me."

Minho quirked an eyebrow. "What are you blabbering about, you drunkard?"

Rose squared her gaze on him and studied his face, her vision dulling and sharpening as it saw fit. "When other people are around, you act like you can't stand me, but when I'm alone, I can't get rid of you. Like now."

Minho elected to stare out into the blackness that clawed at the unscalable stone walls ahead of them. "And I thought you were a pain-in-the-ass sober. What are you doing out here anyway? Shouldn't you be with your adoring fans?"

"I needed a break," she said flatly as she followed his gaze.

"From Thomas." It wasn't a question.

Rose blanched. "What do you know about that?"

Minho refused to look at her as he said, "I saw that stupid shank kiss you."

He had? Rose hadn't seen the Keeper all night. Come to think of it, she hadn't even seen him much at her own bonfire, might not have at all if Gally hadn't brought her out into the darkness to apologize. What was he always doing out here so far from the people who seemed to idolize him?

"He shouldn't have done that." Minho let the silence baste her for a moment before he added, "But to be fair, you shouldn't have kissed Newt."

So, he'd seen that, too. Had he been watching her all night?

"It wasn't like that," Rose insisted much quieter this time.

"Doesn't matter. What's Thomas supposed to think?"

"He's supposed to trust me enough to know I wouldn't do something like that to him. Why would I let him sleep with me last night if I was just going to make out with other guys?"

Judging from Minho's bugged-out eyes and incredulous stare, Newt had kept her secret where even she could not. Damn this loose tongue of hers.

"Are you out of your shucking mind?" he demanded.

"I mean literally slept. Nothing happened. You jokers all sleep together every night." But Rose knew even as she said it that it was different. "It doesn't matter anyway. Thomas doesn't get to stake his claim like I'm some piece of property. I get to choose who I'm with."

Minho's mouth remained in a hard line, his teeth gritted under his rigid jaw until he released a long, low breath. "Listen, not that I care about any of your shuck drama, but isn't that kind of the point? Thomas just wants to make sure you choose him."

"Well, that's not how this works," she grumbled.

But Rose knew Minho was right, even if she didn't want to admit it. Despite her alcohol-addled brain, she could finally understand. It didn't make her any less angry because it didn't change the fact that Thomas didn't trust their connection, but while it was hard for her to be the only girl here, it was just as hard to be in a relationship with the only girl.

After a moment of hard silence, Rose asked, "Did you know I died?"

"Course I did."

"You never told me," she complained.

"Who cares? You're alive now, ain't ya?" Minho sighed. "So, if you're done feeling sorry for yourself, could you act like the Med-jack you are now and feel sorry for me? Some stupid shuckette threw a damn rock at my head, and it hurts."

"You know I only found out I was a Med-jack an hour ago, right?" Rose said as she angled her body towards him.

"Shut up and fix your mistake, would ya?"

"Where'd I hit you?"

Minho rolled his eyes and sighed. "You mean to tell me you're so shucked you can't even see the huge lump on the side of my otherwise flawless face? How are you this bad at your job already?"

"Hey, I wanted to be a Runner. You're the one who won't let me."

Rose grabbed his chin and tilted it to the side so that what little firelight made it back to them illuminated the mound of a tidy bruise.

Minho's eyes watched her as she tried to focus her fuzzy attention on his wound. "I won't apologize for trying to keep you alive."

"Whatever. Long as you know you're just delaying the inevitable, shuck-face," she retorted with his favorite insult.

"Can you say even one word without slurring it?"

"Shut. Up." Rose enunciated each word as best she could, but she could tell by the appearance of one perfect dimple that she had failed. She jerked his head to the side a bit more roughly, which only intensified his smile and brought out the dimple matching set.

Rose brought her right hand up to Minho's temple and traced the perimeter of his welt with her thumb. Suddenly, his smile faded. His eyes bored into her with every stroke, and she became painfully aware of the fact that this was the first time she had ever touched him. Twice now Minho had had his hands on her, and now it was her turn.

Rose knew she didn't have any dimples to accentuate her smug smile, but from the stern look on Minho's face, it didn't matter. He suspected what was coming. He also didn't try to stop her.

She sat on her knees for a more dominating height and leaned forward. Sure, she was getting a closer look at his wound, but Rose also knew precisely what would happen when she did so. From her elevation, her chest was closer to his face and his hot, firm breaths feathered across her décolletage.

"What are you doing?" Minho asked slowly.

"Exactly what you asked. Examining you."

 _And paying you back, you slinthead_ , she thought.

She outlined his bump again, and if Minho felt pain, he didn't show it, but he did jerk back as her face got ever closer to his temple.

"Hold still," Rose commanded and raked her fingers along his scalp to secure him. His hair was every bit as soft as she had always expected, and perhaps it was the alcohol coursing through her veins or something else entirely, but Rose had the urge to run her hands through every strand of it. She realized almost immediately that her little joke had already gone too far. Despite the fact that this was her game to play with Minho, Rose felt like she was losing it.

"You're drunk," he said, his eyes fixed on her pulse surging through her neck.

Rose pulled back slightly, and though shadows and a fog of liquor had encompassed them, enough light penetrated their sanctuary for her to see things as they were, clear enough to see Minho's dark eyes mapping her, clear enough to see his intentions on his lips.

"Yup," was all she could reply.

 _Get out of here, you idiot_ , she scolded herself. But Rose wasn't listening, not even to herself. She was still too close, still stroking Minho's skin, still entwined with his hair. In a last-ditch effort to save herself, the only sober recess of her mind screamed, _Thomas! Thomas! Thomas!_

It was enough to snap Rose out of her stupor. Sure, she and Thomas had had a fight, but wasn't it her foolhardy shenanigans like this what had caused it in the first place? Minho had been right: no matter how innocently, she shouldn't have kissed Newt, and, even more foolishly, she shouldn't have been playing games with Minho. God, she was selfish and thoughtless.

Rose shook her head to clear away some cobwebs and had at least a sliver of decency to seriously inspect Minho's bump. Finding no blood or other trauma, she sat back abruptly.

"You're fine, you humongous baby," she proclaimed with a laugh, hoping that it would reinforce the idea that it had all been a joke for both of them. Even drunk Rose wasn't so convinced.

Minho groaned and collapsed back into the grass. "You know, Rose, you might actually be the biggest shuck-face of anyone here."

"Probably."

Rose followed his example and fell back, too. Grass tickled the back of her knees with its dewy fingers and sent a chill through her body. She stared overhead to the strange green veil of shimmering light unfurling above them. She knew it had a name, but she couldn't recall it. She had seen the phenomenon once or twice in the last month, but tonight, the ethereal light was ultra-vivid. Jade plumes capped with fuchsia flames undulated above them, like a curtain to the backstage of a burlesque, and cast gentle luminescence over them. The otherworldly display mercifully obscured the galaxy tonight, saving Rose from another grizzly reminder of her departed friend.

Her eyes followed the river of light from one wall to the other until she caught sight of the profile softly glowing beside her. Minho's chest rose and fell like he had just finished another run, and even from her side vantage, Rose could tell his eyes had a faraway look, seeing perhaps even farther beyond the minty gauze and the galaxy billions of miles away.

"Minho?"

His face rolled toward hers, and Rose realized her folly immediately. Looking at each other like this gave her the distinct feeling of sharing a bed. Her heart seized inexplicably in her chest.

"Tell me about the first time you saw me in the Maze."

He raised one eyebrow, and after a moment, opened his mouth, but instead of hearing words, Rose heard a strange pattering. They bolted upright, eyes fixed on the Wall that lurked ahead of them. No mistaking it, the tapping was coming from inside it.

 _Tap tap tap tap tap._

"You ever heard that before?" Rose managed after the noise ceased. Minho slowly shook his head.

Silence for a moment followed by a horrible scraping that made them cover their ears. Eventually, the scraping gave way to a deeper sound more akin to gouging, maybe even chiseling. Finally, after a few minutes, it stopped.

At some point Minho had grabbed her hand, and jerked her up.

"Come on," he said, "fun's over."

* * *

Sickly fluorescent luminescence washed out two analytical faces as they studied a series of screens in front of them. The face with the flat nose pressed his lips together as he watched two figures scatter across a field of grass. "Are you sure that was the right time to issue the missive? Readings were trending toward optimal."

Small green eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses darted from jogging silhouettes to live graphs on dueling monitors. One featured a line graph of continuously climbing peaks and a few shallow valleys while the other showcased a cross-section of a brain alight with a rainbow of fireworks.

With a slow nod, Dr. Thorne said, "I agree, but unfortunately, we must follow the Directives. Much as it pains me to say it, she hasn't been wrong yet, and ultimately, this time it isn't our experiment."

Dr. Espina reviewed a checklist on his clipboard as he added an X over one of the boxes. "Directive 2.4 was successfully accomplished this afternoon."

"Another thing she was right about," Dr. Thorne said, "if these preliminary readings are to be believed. Along with the violin variable, we are getting groundbreaking readings from many of the candidates tonight. Softer approach, indeed."

Dr. Espina ran his hand over the sharp peninsula of his receding widow's peak and frowned. "But we're still not seeing optimum output from the Target Subject. It feels like we're on the cusp of a breakthrough, but it's eluding us."

"Hence the missive, I suspect." Glasses raised, Dr. Thorne dragged her finger down a list and tapped with satisfaction. "Things will change with the completion of Directive 3.1. That could be your cusp, Raúl."

Dr. Espina checked his list again until he found the instruction his fellow scientist noted. He let out a low hum of interest. "Are you sure that's the right move so early? We haven't completed the Second Stage Directives yet."

Dr. Thorne looked back at the screen as several boys eyed the girl in the dress. She and the Korean boy were back at the central bonfire with many of the others ringing them as they spoke animatedly. The way a few of the boys tightened ranks around the girl was unmistakable, even from the distant vantage inside the doctors' laboratory. It brought a smile to the bespectacled scientist's face.

"I know she's not here authorize it, but if she saw these reactions, I'm confident she would."

With a nod to his colleague, Dr. Espina pulled out a keyboard and began typing strings of code into a black and white program.

"We can notify the Chancellor after the new Directive has commenced," Dr. Thorne continued. "She would probably like to sit in for the results."

* * *

 _Fun fact: Search for "Soggy's Slip Jig" by Pär Persson Mattsson on Soundcloud, and it will help you envision what kind of jig Rose might have been playing. Hope you're enjoying yourselves!_


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter Thirteen**

 _Beastie Boys – Sabotage_

Thomas and Minho were back earlier than expected from their run—about seven hours too early. Rose could see from the window in the sick room that there was a small group congregating around the South Wall, and instantly her heart raced.

"Clint!" she shouted.

"What's wrong?" the Keeper asked.

"The Runners are back."

"Already?"

At the unmistakable note of worry in his voice, Rose snatched his medical bag and, before Clint could say another word, took off across the Glade, leaving her mentor panting behind her. She reached the Door, breathless and confused, where she found both Thomas and Minho healthy, unharmed, and staring wide-eyed at her.

"Are you okay?" she wheezed.

"Aw, Dr. Shuckette was worried about me," Minho mused with a satisfied shrug of his mouth.

Thomas' reception wasn't nearly so warm. "We're fine."

"Then what are you doing back so early?" She crossed her arms and waited for an explanation.

"Waiting on the Admiral," Minho answered.

"Why?"

Minho crossed his arms, too, as the three of them squared off. "Don't worry your pretty little head about it."

Rose expected such an answer from the Keeper of the Runners, but she never expected the cold indifference of Thomas': "It's Runner stuff. It doesn't concern Med-jacks."

For a split second, she thought about walloping him again, but Alby showed up as if on cue, and since Rose didn't fancy spending another night in the Slammer, she calmed down. Without another, the three men reentered the Maze. They spoke in hushed tones, so she couldn't make out much but Alby's final exclamation.

"What do you mean 'three days'?"

* * *

Rose spent the rest of her morning with Jeff, staring out the Med-hut window at the South Door. It felt like hours, but eventually, the trio jogged back to the Homestead. The hopeful part of Rose expected them to show up at her door and bring her into the fold, but instead, Newt appeared.

His blonde hair caught a stiff breeze as he offered Rose an awkward smile. They hadn't spoken since she kissed him, but if everyone hadn't made such a big deal about it, she wondered if she would have felt so uncomfortable. As it were, just looking at Newt's face, with his expressive eyes and soft mouth, made Rose feel all sorts of confused. Guilt, embarrassment, regret, and even something warmer, something like curiosity, bubbled up into one discombobulating brew.

"Hi," she managed lamely.

"Hi."

"Thank you again," she bumbled, "for the fiddle and for your support. It's the one of the nicest things I can remember someone doing for me."

Newt stared at Rose for a long moment, opened his mouth and closed it again. After a few seconds of deliberation, he said, "As long as you're happy."

Rose offered him a half-smile because she didn't know how else to answer that, but it wasn't good enough. Newt took one step into the room, one step closer to her, and, much quieter, he added, "You are happy, right?"

"I'm always happy to see you."

It was the easy answer because it was true, but it was also a half-truth.

So far, everything with Thomas had been easy, especially compared to her dynamics with the other boys. Now, Rose didn't know where things stood between them, and the thing that had seemed the surest, the one vestige she had from her previous life, was in turmoil. Her footing felt like it was slipping.

"I'm actually looking for Clint," Newt said, glancing behind her. Rose reached for the medical bag, thinking they were needed for an emergency, but the blonde boy stopped her. "Only Clint. Sorry."

To his credit, Newt did sound apologetic, but it didn't lessen the sting any. Rose opened the back door that connected the sick room to the Homestead and called for the Keeper.

At the sight of the Med-jack, Newt blurted, "Alby is calling a Gathering in the Council Hall."

Clint rolled his eyes. "This gonna be a monthly thing now?"

"Look at it this way," Newt joked to Rose, "at least it's not about you this time."

Despite how onerous the two of them made the whole thing sound, Rose was put-out. She couldn't shake the feeling that the Gathering had something to do with the sound she and Minho had heard at the bonfire, and if that were the case, then it had everything to do with her, not that anyone here wanted to acknowledge that, except maybe Ender.

The two men said goodbye and disappeared into the Council Hall, leaving Rose and Jeff in the sick room with nothing for her to do except agonize over what the Keepers could be discussing. She slumped at the counter, tapping her fingers relentlessly, reliving the _tap-tap-tap-tap-tap_ that plagued the corners of her mind.

"Don't stress about it," Jeff said suddenly as he snapped a book closed behind her. "I'm sure if it's important enough, they'll tell all us shanks."

But the fact that she wasn't invited to the Council meeting wasn't the only thing that chafed at Rose. Other questions loomed larger than even the Walls did, and she could no longer bite back the one that had kept her up all of last night.

"Jeff, do you think I'm a bad person?"

The tall boy narrowed his brown eyes at her. "What'd you do, Rose?"

She slumped down until her head rested on the counter, fingers replaying those five taps. "I don't know. Feels like everything these days is my fault."

The other Med-jack dragged a chair next to her and ran a hand across his uneven buzz cut. "Well, it ain't, so stop worrying. Dude, are all girls this high maintenance?"

"I don't remember any, but I feel like I should take offense to that comment anyway," Rose retorted when she realized that, weirdly, she felt better.

"Go ahead. Anything to get you to stop sulking and start thinking of supplies we're going to need for next week. And for shuck's sake, would ya quit that damn tapping?"

* * *

Jeff had been right. As soon as the last of the Runners returned from the Maze, Alby ordered everybody to the Council Hall. With everyone packed into the place, the small room was stifling under a haze of ripe body odor and mud-caked skin. Rose was sandwiched in the second row from the back between Jeff and Chuck, who both looked more terrified than delighted at being included in the Gathering.

Minho and Thomas bookended Alby in the center of the room, while the other Keepers and Newt ringed the wall behind them. With a confirming look back to Minho, Alby walked to the front and said, "We received a message from the Creators."

There was a collective gasp as the boys digested the news.

"Carved into the Maze today were the words '3 Days.' Now, before any of you shanks get any stupid ideas and start makin' up klunk, we don't know what it means—could mean anything. But the Council talked all afternoon, and we think things are about to change again. We gotta prepare for anything, which is why you're here. I need my Builders makin' weapons, my Bricknicks fortifying the Homestead. I need Cooks preppin' provisions along with my Track-hoes and Slicers. Baggers gotta patrol the Doors even after they close along with any available shanks willing to step up and be men. If we're ready for anything, we can survive anything, good that?"

But Alby only received a half-hearted agreement. Whispers and rumors were catching like wildfire among the kindling of fearful teenagers.

"Slim it, you shuck-heads," barked Minho.

The whispering quieted but everyone's faces remained uneasy.

"It's gotta have something to do with the broad, right?" shouted someone from the front. "I mean, hell, the whole shuckin' Maze been calling for her day after day."

"Maybe," Alby said. "Maybe not. Point is, we don't know, and that makes it a thousand times more dangerous."

"You think this is the end?"

"Think the Creators just gonna kill us all?"

"I bet they'll cut off our supplies."

"We'll die without 'em."

"What if they send the Grievers in here?"

"They could just be messing with us."

It was a non-stop stream of what-if's as fertile minds worked frantically to decipher a message that had no decryption code.

"Enough!" roared Alby, and the crowd silenced. "The Council's been over all this klunk already. Ain't gonna do us any good to rehash it. We prepare—that's what we do. You don't wanna be a part of that, you can wait out the next two days in the Slammer."

"I got another answer," Ender grumbled from behind the other Keepers. "We do what I've been saying since the beginning. The Maze wants the girl, let it have her."

A few boys chorused their support from the audience while Anil and Newt tried to corral the stampede, but it was hopeless. Fear was gaining momentum faster than her friends could wrangle it, and, in less than a minute, the tide had completely turned against her. And all the while, Thomas was silent—he wouldn't even look at her.

Rose could feel her fists tightening on her lap until her nails nearly drew blood, and her breath accelerated in time with her racing heart. Chuck closed one blocky hand around her wrist, but he was unprepared for her accelerating wrath.

"Seriously, Ender?" Rose said as she jumped to her feet, jerking her hand free from Chuck. "Fuck you."

Every head turned, most in surprise, a couple in humor, one in fear—Thomas.

"And as for the rest of you, tell you what, you want to throw me to the Grievers, you know where to find me. In the meantime, spare me your fake concern and just let me know your decision like you always do."

Rose pushed through a sea of strong shoulders and weak minds as she hurried toward the door. At the last moment, Gally barred it with his muscular arms, but one look at the red-faced Rose and her stern hiss of the Glade's current favorite catchphrase, "Get out, asshole," and his resolve faltered.

"Let her go," Alby commanded.

Like they had any choice.

Rose shoved Gally aside and stormed into the encroaching night. The moment the night air buffeted her skin, her temper cooled and she was filled with regret. Out here in the vastness of the quiet Glade, she felt like a toddler throwing a tantrum—less tough, more spoiled. Stupid tears pricked her stupid giant eyes as she spiraled into stupid self-loathing. How pathetic.

The boys now knew they had hurt her, and that was the last thing Rose had wanted to do in front of a group of guys looking to exploit her every weakness. Her hand wringed her scar. They had gotten to her, and worse yet, she had let them do it.

 _Let her go._

Rose expected in two days' time, she'd be hearing those words at the mouth of the South Door before it closed on her forever.

* * *

Aside from her trainee duties as a Med-jack, Rose kept to herself the next day, taking her meals in her room and avoiding all contact if she could help it. She spent most of the time reading instructions on how to create herbal medicines and then collecting ingredients and combining them where she could. It wasn't much, but it was productive and helped her keep her mind off more pressing matters. She was preparing, just as Alby had asked, but not quite for the same reasons.

Clint and Jeff said nothing about the outcome of the Gathering after Rose had stormed out—they kept everything but medical talk out of the Med-hut—and neither did anyone else. Either Rose had done a good job of avoiding others, or the others knew nothing they could say would change what was to come tomorrow.

The next morning in her room, Rose packed. She filled a bag for herself, including a bunch of stolen granola bars and a handful of other snacks, even those god-awful crackers made of powdered hatred, and a large canteen of water. She added a blade of straightened bedspring she had swiped from the Homestead and a few palm-sized rocks. If today would indeed be her last day in the Glade, at least she would give herself a fighting chance.

Rose hung her dress on a rusty nail that protruded from her wall. She had promised Newt she wouldn't destroy it, but she would have no more use for it unless a Griever fancied a date in Hell. She left the fiddle underneath it encased in its protective shell. Rose's heart bucked at the thought of leaving it, but she could never risk destroying a gift so exquisite, no matter how much it crushed her to abandon it. Maybe one day another Greenie would come up who could play it, too—maybe even Bridget herself—and that hope sustained Rose.

The sun was coming up and before much longer the Doors would open. Everything was about to change, as Alby said, and Rose figured she would, too. She was going to be tough, she was going to be proud, she was going to go out on her own terms.

She pulled the emerald green crop-top from the pile at the bottom of her crate. How she had hated that scrap of fabric the moment she had laid eyes on it. The Creators had gifted it to her to remind her just how different she was from the others in the Glade, to make her feel like nothing more than a plaything, to trivialize her. Today, it would be her armor.

Rose tugged the top over her head. It was even shorter than she expected, landing just below the base of her ribcage and exposing her midriff, and it was so snug it gave her breasts a hefty lift even without the help of her bra. Of course, it left nothing to the imagination either, with a plunging neckline so deep it almost severed the shirt in half, and, to add insult to injury, the weak channel was connected only by the teeth of a teasing zipper. The top had a wildly impractical collar around the back that would have almost lent it some professionalism if her cleavage and stomach weren't on display. Any other day, Rose would have felt like an insecure fool in it. Today, she felt like a damn badass.

After the addition of her leggings, Rose bided her time in her room until she heard the rusty scuffle that told her the Doors were opening. She walked out with her bag slung over her shoulders, just in case they should throw her into the Maze without preamble. The moment her foot she reentered the Glade proper, she could feel the electricity around her, but she refused to glance at anyone.

Rose went straight to the Med-hut, plopped her bag on the counter, and sat down in a chair with her feet up as she delved into a century-old book on treating wounds—best to learn how to patch herself up in the Maze and avoid turning into a galaxy, too.

Unable to withstand the elephant in the room anymore, Jeff blurted, "Holy klunk, we're going to treat at least a dozen shanks in here today for heart attacks."

"That's nice," Rose replied as she flipped to the next page.

As she read, she made a list in her head of herbs and poultices she could snag from the cabinets before the day was out. A few minutes stretched into ten, then into twenty before their Keeper pressed his lips down along with his brow.

"You really going to be like this all day?" Clint said.

Rose ignored him as she plowed through the healing powers of aloe vera. What she wouldn't give for one more supply run from the Box before she left.

Clint kicked the chair out from under her, sending the seat back enough that Rose had to drop her legs from the counter to keep herself upright.

"Hey! I'm reading!" she shouted.

"I can see that. And I'm talking to you, so clear out that klunk between your ears and listen," the Keeper replied.

"What do you want? I'm on a timer."

Clint braced his hands on the chair seat on either side of Rose's thighs and leaned in until they were nearly nose-to-nose. "You know no one's going to send you into the Maze, right, shuck-head? Thomas and Minho would never allow it. If you'd stayed more than five minutes at the Gathering, you would have known that."

Leave it to Minho to stand up to a lynch mob just to deny her the one thing she knew she was supposed to do.

"You have friends here, Rose. We want to protect you."

"Maybe that's what I want to do, too. Maybe this is how I'll do it. I'm not scared of the Maze, Clint. Dumb as that sounds, I'm not. So, when the pitchforks and torches come out, you don't have to worry. I'll be going where I need to."

Clint stood up and leaned back with crossed arms. "You sound like you're giving up."

"That's exactly what I'm _not_ doing," she stated firmly and reopened her book.

"I fought for you, Rose. I asked for you to be on my team, stuck my neck out for ya, and this is the thanks I get? You gave up at the first sign of trouble, you folded. Med-jacks don't fold, you slinthead. They have to stay even, no matter the pressure."

"I wasn't trying to fold," she mumbled.

"But you did. I don't know what you are, Rose, but you ain't no Med-jack. You let me down."

With a slam of the door, Clint headed into the Homestead, and no matter how long Rose stared at the same words, she couldn't read them. She already knew she was a gross disappointment to herself, but it ached her soul to know she also was for someone who had looked out for her. But in the end, though she had been sufficiently shamed, Clint's words wouldn't change anything. She'd be in the Maze by day's end—of that, she was sure.

The two Med-jacks left her alone after that, save for a moment in the early afternoon to tell her they were going on their daily Blood House run. Rose willed herself to half-heartedly raid the cabinets for a few bandages and a couple of tinctures and salves that she knew they wouldn't run out of before the next supply Box.

The sun dipped lower, but no one had come for her. Rose could feel the minutes slipping by until the Doors would close, and yet whatever threat the Creators had promised had not appeared. A chill ran up her spine at the thought of something sneaking into the Glade under the cover of darkness. Surely the Creators couldn't be that merciless, could they?

Anticipation, even frustration, got the better of Rose, and she grabbed her bag and headed outside. Ripe and rugged afternoon sun pierced the Glade and made her squint under the visor of her arm as she scanned for a mob.

They were waiting by the South Door, just as she had predicted. Dozens of boys gathered to see her off, though she was too far out to see their faces. As Rose jogged over, her heart raced, but she found it wasn't from exertion or even fear. She was ready for this challenge—even anticipating it. In a way, she felt like she was made for it. Perhaps that was part of the reason why she had always felt a connection with Thomas. She knew from the stories the others told that he was made the same way.

She wondered if he would be among the mob. Other than his few cold words the other day, Thomas hadn't spoken to her since the bonfire. Was he angry enough to banish her?

Rose's vision refocused. She recognized the long mop of blonde hair among the growing crowd. She hadn't expected Newt to be there. He was one of the few Gladers who had supported. He had danced with her. He had given her a beautiful gift. Now, he would be part of the troop seeing her off to what they imagined would be her demise. Despite her practiced composure, Newt's betrayal threatened an onslaught of tears. But Rose couldn't let them come up. She corked the well in her heart until the Doors would have the mercy to close on her.

Rose was almost there, and yet none of the mob acknowledged her. She expected jeers and shouts and angry fists, not total indifference.

Until she realized they weren't there for her at all.

A quick scan of the perimeter showed a sea of faces Rose knew well by now: Thomas, Chuck, Newt, Gally, Jeff and Clint, Anil, Jackson, and two dozen more.

"What's going on?" Rose asked as she pulled up beside Newt.

"Minho's not back," he said.

Fear, she heard fear.

"He was right behind me a minute ago, I swear," Thomas asserted frantically. "I'm going back to find him."

Gally's hand clamped down onto Thomas' shoulder, his fingers digging in so harshly that Rose could see the Builder's knuckles whiten. "You ain't going back in there, shuck-face. Doors are about to close, and I'll be damned if I let a psycho like you spend another night in there. Probably just what you want. You already offed Minho so you can be the next Keeper. Gonna carve another message for us to make sure you get the job?"

Thomas tried to shake him free, but Gally was too strong and too angry. "Damnit, Gally, put your stupid shit aside. This is Minho we're talking about. We've got to find him."

"Minho will be back. He always comes back," Chuck murmured, and Rose could tell it was the beginning of a mantra he'd be chanting in a moment.

As if on cue, the Keeper of the Runners rounded the bend. But something was wrong. As he turned the home stretch, he was limping heavily, his left foot stumbling a pace or two behind him as both hands braced against his left hip. His eyes scrunched up in pain, and his progress ground to a halt.

"How many minutes?" someone called.

"Hard to tell. Seven, maybe eight?" came the answer.

"Let me help him," Thomas spat as he thrashed against Gally's hands.

"He can do it," the Builder asserted, though Rose could see his grip was loosening.

But every second counted, and Minho was bleeding. Even in the gathering shadows, Rose could see the trail of crimson breadcrumbs he left behind him. Worse yet, she could hear a hungry growl somewhere behind him followed by a series of clicks and whirs and taps.

Minho's eyes widened, but his knees buckled, his limbs shook, and more grains of sand fell through the invisible hourglass.

 _Oh. Fuck._

And into the Maze she went.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter Fourteen**

 _Block B Bastarz – Zero for Conduct_

 _Oh. Fuck._

Two sentences, with just enough time in between them for Rose to make up her mind. Her feet were already moving. The second her toe hit the floor of the Maze, a gust of foul-smelling wind, like the breath of the Grim Reaper himself, rushed over her face.

" _Rosalind…"_

 _Oh, fuck._

One sentence this time was all she needed to drive her feet at maximum speed.

Behind her, the Gladers shouted—pleaded—anything to get her to turn around. Ahead of her, Minho yelled at her, too. "No, you shuck-face!"

Rose ignored them all; she had to. It wasn't a far run, but she threw everything she had into it because she knew that invisible clock would never stop ticking. She reached Minho's side, panting more like a dog than a human.

Minho was less grateful and more aggravated than anything else. He leaned against the wall, releasing a pathetic cough. "How dumb are you, woman? This is what it wants."

"I don't care what it wants, what you want, or what they want. What _I_ want right now is to save your stupid ass."

Rose frowned, brushing aside the Runner's hands from his hip so she could assess the damage. Minho's faded blue shirt was stained cherry around a long slash in the fabric that clung tenaciously to his skin. She tried to peel it back, but he swatted her away.

"It's just a cut," he insisted.

"How much time do we have left?"

Minho glanced up at the patchwork blue sky and squinted. "I'd say five minutes, but what the hell do I know. My watch is busted."

"Plenty of time," Rose assured, and with a protesting grunt from the Runner, she put his arm around her shoulder and let her speed drive his legs faster. But it wasn't fast enough.

"I thought you were the best of the best," she prodded. "Why are you so slow?"

"Oh, I don't know," Minho snarked, "maybe it's the giant _hole_ in me."

"That's no excuse. Move your legs, grandpa."

Rose knew she was driving him hard, but they only had a few minutes to reach the Doors and—

The Doors were closing. They were already fucking closing. No way it had been five minutes. Rose could hear the gears grinding and watched in horror as the metal rods emerged from their shelters in the concrete to web across the entrance in slow motion.

"Shuck," growled Minho. "Shuck! Shuck! Shuck! I told you, woman. You never listen."

The Runner's right knee buckled as the last of his strength fizzled out with his hope. Rose grunted as she propped Minho's body along the length of her back, hoping she had enough left in her tank to get the two of them across the finish line. His feet dragged on the ground even as she hunched over, but it was enough. Minho was nothing but heavy muscle and dead weight by this point, but Rose could manage it for a few more feet—she had to. Every second, the Doors inched closer to locking them inside, maybe forever, and while Rose was ready to accept that fate for herself, she was not willing to sacrifice another, even if it was Minho.

The bars were about to sheathe into the opposing doors when Rose reached the grinding behemoths. She dropped Minho and shoved him through without preamble. Gally finally relinquished Thomas, and the Runner darted in to drag out his Keeper by his arms. Dozens of hands waited on the other side to help as they lay Minho in the sun-soaked grass.

But the rods were in place now, and the Doors were only a few feet from closing.

"You can do it, Rose!"

"Come on, you've got this!"

"Hurry the shuck up!"

Chants of encouragement reverberated off the walls of the Maze, but fear had cemented Rose's feet, and the sudden approaching _whir-click-tap_ behind her only made it worse. She had a sinking feeling that she could never leave, and if she tried… Well, the memory of the Doors snapping shut in front of her had never left her.

A shrinking concrete window framed Thomas' face. His eyes were desperate, and every muscle was taut. He reached a hand through the steel bars. "Rose, don't give up. Please come back—to me. Please!"

Rose shifted on her feet. She felt the weight of her bag over her shoulder. She was prepared to make it through the night—she probably could, too—but looking at the desperate faces of her friends, she didn't want to. She wanted to stay with them.

Willing adrenaline to pump into every last capillary, Rose backed up a few feet and charged. She pushed off the ground and launched herself up, her hands gripping for purchase around one of the steel rods as she swung herself forward like a pendulum. Rose pitched her legs between the hurdles of the lower rods and catapulted through the Doors. Thomas caught her waist, and they tumbled backward into the yard as the dull thunk of concrete resonated behind them.

"I'm alive," she cackled in astonishment. "I'm alive!"

Rose looked down at Thomas before she gripped his cheeks between her hands and pressed her lips to his.

No sooner had she come up for air than two pairs of hands encircled her biceps and wrenched her off. She glanced to hersides and saw Billy and Fen peeling her back. "What the hell, guys?"

Alby stood beside them, wiping sweat and frustration from his face with the palm of his hand. "You know the rules, Rose. I gotta put you in the Slammer until we decide what to do with you."

But Rose shook the boys off. "Not yet. Where's Minho?"

The Baggers reached for her again, but Rose juked until she found the crumpled form of the Keeper of the Runners half-conscious on his side. Clint and Jeff knelt on either side of him, but neither had a medical bag. Jeff offered his shirt as a staunch for the wound, but until they could properly close it, Minho's life was in the worst danger, especially if they didn't clean it immediately.

Rose bullied her way between them and removed Jeff's shirt so she could ease Minho's away from the wound. The fabric was so saturated with blood that it was hard to tell what was skin and what was clothing. The wound itself was precise and deep, made by a sharp blade swiping lightning fast. Minho's muscles quivered beneath his flesh as her fingers tenderly probed its edges, but there was no time to be grossed out.

"Somebody keep him talking," Rose commanded, and Newt knelt beside his friend.

"Said nobody ever, right, ya bloody loudmouth?" the blonde joked to Minho with a rather bleak expression. "Are you stung?"

Minho's eyes squeezed tighter as he grunted out a "no."

"What happened?"

"What's it shuckin' look like, numb nuts? Griever sliced me."

Newt laughed as he announced to the others, "He's all right. Bloody shuck-head hasn't been stung."

A collective sigh of relief rang out, and though Rose had heard stories of the horrors a Griever sting could inflict, if the others could see Minho's injury, they wouldn't have been celebrating.

So much blood. She needed a stitch kit—she hadn't had the foresight to bring that—so for the moment, she had to settle for cleaning and packing the wound until they could get him back to the Med-hut. Rose dumped out her bag until she found the bandages and a tincture she had pilfered.

"You just bring the whole pharmacy with you?" Clint asked aghast.

Rose huffed. "Can't anyone here just shut up and be grateful for a minute?"

To Minho, she squeezed his waist to grab his attention and said, "Try not to hate me for this."

"You mean any more than I already do?" he wheezed.

"Okay, now I'm just going to enjoy this," Rose muttered under her breath.

After she nodded to Clint and Jeff, the two Med-jacks pinned the Runner's arms against the ground and the circle fell silent. Rose uncorked a small jar, the bitter smell of salt and garlic punching her in the nose. She tipped the cruet forward until pale yellow liquid spilled into the angry red trench below. The effect was immediate.

Minho's screams pierced Rose's heart as herbs and salt bubbled in the fleshy chasm and seared away infection. His cries were mind-altering. Even in his death throes, Cat had suffered in eerie silence, lending a preternatural tranquility to the world of healing as Rose had known it. Minho had shattered that image as emphatically as a hammer against a snow globe.

She was causing him pain, and she cursed herself for making a joke about it. She didn't enjoy this. It was the worst sound she'd ever heard, and without even realizing it, Rose was crying. Her tears dripped down onto the bare patch of Minho's stomach, pooling alongside the blood and the medicine.

Rose ran a hand along his bare ribs as much to hold him down as to offer him some kind of comfort. As the fizzing in the wound subsided, so did his screams, and Clint and Jeff removed their hands. Rose wasn't yet ready to remove hers. She stroked one rib with her hand until that fierce spark that had always charged Minho's eyes finally returned; it may have spluttered like an empty lighter trying to ignite, but at least it was still there.

He lolled his head toward her, a ghost of a dimple teasing the edge of his mouth. "That wasn't so bad," he managed weakly. "That all you got, Dr. Shuckette?"

Rose lightly pinched the skin along his abdomen. "Real tough guy, huh?"

Minho winced, but it was mostly for show. It certainly didn't seem to dampen his spirits. "Someone once called me the best of the best."

"Sounds like a real moron."

"I thought you kissed all your patients," the Keeper mumbled, each word fading into the last as he fought to stay awake.

"Oh god, you're delirious," Rose retorted, but Minho's body was already giving in to its exhaustion. His eyes fluttered shut, that damn dimple still plaguing his cheek.

She motioned for the other Med-jacks to carry the patient back to the Homestead, and as soon as they had secured him to a makeshift stretcher, hands closed around Rose's wrists again. She glanced to her sides to see Billy and Fen again, both wearing matching masks of apology as they hoisted her to her feet.

Thomas shuffled in front of them, arms spread wide as he tried to bar their way. "Where are you taking her?"

"Where she belongs," Alby answered coolly. "The Slammer. You should know. All this feels familiar, don't it, Thomas?"

Thomas' eyes were wide as he stepped closer to Rose. He stroked her face, but for the first time, the tingles were an afterthought—there but no longer overwhelming.

"This is my fault," he said. "If I'd just gone back in for Minho, they wouldn't be locking you up."

"I think we both know this was bound to happen," Rose replied, hanging her head in his hands.

"It'll be okay, Rose," Thomas reassured, but she wasn't so sure.

The Maze now had a taste of her, and it would be wanting her back. If the other Gladers had their way, it would be permanently.

* * *

It was dark inside the Slammer but not dark enough.

Rose recognized the tell-tale clotted stickiness before she could see it. She didn't know how she remembered it, but it was a feeling that had never left her no matter how vehemently her memory had been scrubbed. She looked at her hands.

Cherry red turned black in the dark.

"No, no, no."

Rose whimpered the word so many times it became a dark, melodic theme song.

She rubbed her hands furiously on her pants but the blood clung, rubbed and rubbed until her skin burned from the friction, and yet it wouldn't wipe away.

"Get it off. Get it off!"

Rose scraped her hands against the dirt floor, grinding the meat of her palms on the stones. It was still there—dirty blood that would never come off, as filthy as her soul. Rose crawled to the door and beat mercilessly against it. She dragged her hands down its splintery length, but nothing was abrasive enough to remove the nightmare on her skin.

She had no idea how long she been screaming because she didn't even realize she was screaming until her voice withered and died on her dry lips. Even then, Rose's body released disturbing gurgles and wheezes as her fists continued to bang on the door. She would scream until somebody finally listened, until somebody finally helped her—if anybody could help her.

At last, the door to the Slammer flew open, and Rose tumbled onto Clint and Newt's feet. She clawed feebly at their laces and cried, "Please. Please get it off."

"What in the bloody hell?" Newt said, taking a step back.

Clint knelt in front of her and Rose scrambled forward, palms up. "You have to help me. It won't come off. Make it come off."

"What the hell have you done to yourself?" the Med-jack asked as he studied the carnage on her hands. It was hard to tell what was Minho's blood, what was hers, and what was everything ground into it. It was grisly chaos.

"It's touching me. It's not mine. It's everyone's. I don't want it. Take it away, please! It hurts."

"Of course, it hurts. Look what you've done, Rose," Clint gasped. His fingers plumbed the tender horrors of her palms, plucking rocks and splinters as long as toothpicks from her skin. "Why would you do this?"

"It's touching me. It's not mine," she repeated as though she hadn't heard him at all.

Clint shook his head. "I don't understand. Blood never bothered you when you were cleaning wounds. You didn't even flinch."

Rose shook her head furiously. "It's not the blood, it's the blood on me."

"It's just her blood," Clint whispered to Newt.

He was wrong. Rose could feel it squirming under her own blood, as though it was spurting directly from severed arteries onto her. "It won't come off. It won't come off. I can't stop it. I can't stop any of it."

"She's going 'round the bend," Newt said, his brows pinched tightly together.

The blonde crouched beside Rose and grasped her cheeks between his hands, his thumbs stroking the tense swells beneath her eyes. He leveled his honeyed eyes onto her and coaxed her back to him. "Rose, it's your friend, Newt. Do you hear me? I need you to listen to me, please listen. Look at me, Rose, look at me."

A taut wire in her brain snapped, and she collapsed onto Newt's lap in a heap. His fingers worked through her knotted curls as he soothed her addled brain.

"There's no more blood, Rose," he assured, "no more."

Rose was coming back to herself slowly. She could see the ebony silhouettes of trees and the lights of the Homestead struggling through them. She could hear voices in the distance and her own racing heartbeat. She could smell soil and vegetables and sunshine on Newt's knees. She could taste the thick coating of stale horror in her mouth and chalky dust on her teeth. And she could still feel the syrupy ooze of foreign blood on her skin.

"I know you think I'm crazy, and maybe I am, but it's still there. It won't come off. I couldn't save any of them, and it won't come off."

Newt ran a hand down her spine and back up. "You saved Minho."

She shook her head. "Minho is right, I'm dangerous. You should just throw me in the Maze and let the Doors close on me."

Rose would have cried if she didn't feel so shriveled. She was a husk.

Newt did not stop the reassuring flourishes of his fingers in her curls, even tucking willful strands behind her ears. "We're not going to do that because you're not crazy. I know what it feels like to believe that. It's easier to believe that you're broken beyond repair than it is to believe that others can help put you back together."

Clint brought a canteen of water over and poured it gently over her hands. Rose couldn't even find the energy to wince at the sting. The Med-jack stripped off his shirt and used it to dab off the detritus that flecked her damaged skin.

"You don't understand," Rose said. "I hurt people."

Newt tucked the same stubborn curl back again. "Do you want to hurt Clint?"

"No."

His hand paused. "Do you want to hurt me?"

"No," she breathed. "Never."

"Do you want to hurt Minho?"

"A little."

Newt issued a gentle laugh and glanced to Clint. "She's coming back to us."

Clint smiled and stole one furtive rub of her fingertips. He swirled his dampened shirt around the perimeter of her palms, and once they were clean, he brought his lantern closer and plucked the last of the shrapnel from her explosive breakdown.

Newt rested a hand on Rose's bicep. "What happened today wasn't your fault."

"Everything feels like my fault," she whispered back, squeezing her eyes shut to combat the barrage of misery that suddenly burst through. Cat, Minho, the metallic murmur of her name from behind the Walls, the message "3 days".

"I promise you, it's not. The others will see that soon, too. Now come on, let's get you out of here."

Newt's hand urged Rose upward to a sitting position while Clint's eyes brimmed with concern. "They're not ready for her yet."

But the blonde just shrugged one shoulder. "She's ready."

"Alby will be—"

"He'll be fine, Clint. Leave me deal with him," Newt snapped. He looked over at Rose and said, "Shall we?"

Reluctantly, Rose nodded. She flexed and curled her fingers and felt her blood well up onto the bandages Clint had just wrapped around her palms. Her hands throbbed, but at least they weren't sticky anymore—it was her blood, just hers now.

"Where are we going?"

Newt quirked a brow. "Council Hall, of course."

Rose ran a hand over her face and groaned. "You always take me on the worst dates."

"Good to see you have your wit back," Newt said with a soft smile.

"You're going to need it," Clint added, and everyone's face fell.

The closer they got to the Council Hall, the grimmer things felt. The last two Gatherings hadn't been picnics by any means, but this felt more like an execution than a trial. The only thing Rose had going for her was that her fear reserves had been exhausted. Whatever punishment the Council could mete out would feel like nothing in comparison to the sheer terror that had just quaked her bones.

The moment they entered the Council Hall, the voices inside quieted. A now customary sight, all of the Keepers except Minho dotted the room, their bodies frozen in mid-argument. Alby, as always, towered at the head of the hall, but this time Frypan and Ender stood toe-to-toe in the center, the hairy behemoth with one thick digit pointed in the rotund kid's face.

Anil lurked in one of the corners, looking every bit the afterthought he usually was in a room stuffed full of egos, but Rose knew the man well enough by now to recognize an odd approving look in his eyes.

Thomas had been pacing along the back of the room, but he shot to her side the moment he laid eyes on her. He gripped her wrist and slid his hand down to hers only to find the soft cotton of bandages. He lifted her palms up as he examined them with a worried expression. "What happened?"

"I'm okay," Rose deflected. She allowed herself to melt into his shoulder as she drew strength from the safety his arms offered.

"We're not done here yet," the Keeper of the Sloppers objected as he leveled his dark eyes on Rose's red mop.

"Nobody cares, Ender," Newt snapped.

"You really think it's a good idea to bring her in here already?" Zart asked as his eyes roved over Rose's taxed face, finally settling on the zipper of her crop-top.

Winston made a loop-di-loop with his finger beside his head. "Yeah, the crazy shankette made half the Glade piss themselves thinking she was being torn limb from limb."

Rose narrowed her eyes as she sagged onto one of the benches. "I'm sorry my panic attack scared _you_ , Winston."

"Not me—" he started to argue, but Alby waved him off.

Though their leader tried to keep his voice low as he addressed his second-in-command, Rose heard Alby say, "You sure 'bout this? Other shanks are pretty freaked."

But Newt didn't bother to whisper his response. "Trust me, Rose is fine. Might make all this bloody tomfoolery go a lot faster if she can just speak for herself."

Alby gave a tentative nod, but as usual, caution bobbed in his coffee eyes. "All right, you shanks, let's get this show on the road. We all know why we're here—"

Ender's scowl puffed his beefy cheeks forward like he was being slowly inflated with helium, and his bottom lip ballooned like a fat, bloodless worm. "I may as well just set up my hammock here, turn this into another bedroom for how much time we spend talking about one stupid girl."

"Slim it, Ender. You know how we do things here," Alby said and then directed his attention to Rose.

He motioned for her to stand in the center of the room, and with the last of her strength, she heaved herself up, tired from more than just her breakdown, tired from all the bullshit. She rolled her head from shoulder to shoulder, as if this were an everyday routine in the Glade—hell, it was beginning to feel like it; about that, Ender wasn't totally wrong.

"Rose, you stand here accused of breaking the most sacred rule in the Glade," Alby continued, "Rule Three: entering the Maze as a non-Runner. Before the Council votes, you can state your case."

Rose watched the boys twitch as they waited for her answer, and the corner of her mouth quirked up. "My case? Come on, I barely went anywhere—you could literally see me the whole time! And I saved a man's life. Isn't that the only thing that matters?"

Gally squinted at her. "You know there are rules."

"Yeah, but who makes rules that cost lives, not save them? It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I don't regret saving Minho, and I won't apologize for it. You should all be ashamed of even asking me to. You, most of all, Gally, considering you could have let Thomas go back for him, but you're so busy with your pissing contest you can't even see that."

The Builder's face reddened as his eyes darted around the room. His mouth opened, but whatever he had to say, he thought better of it and snapped it shut.

Rose sighed. "We wouldn't even be arguing this if you'd just let me be a Runner like I'd asked. I told you we wouldn't get a choice about this, and I was right. Three days, the Creators said. Day three, and guess what? The Maze got what it wanted. It's not going to stop until I make it stop."

"She's right," Ender said, surprising all of them. He walked toward Rose, looking at her for the first time she could really remember. The Slopper had spent so much of his time giving her directives through other people, badmouthing her to other people, she wasn't sure he could even pick her out of a line up, excepting her conspicuous adornment of a pair of breasts. His gaze was cold and sharper than the business end of Anil's chisel. "Let's give them both what they want. Toss her in the Maze and be done with the whole thing. Then we can all go back to the way things were."

"I don't want to go back," Thomas shouted. "Do any of you really want to go back? Before Rose got here, we'd given up. We've all just been carrying out the motions. We run the Maze, we do our jobs, we live our lives, and nothing else. We've stopped trying. The Creators are telling us that's not good enough. Rose is our best chance of moving forward, of getting the hell out of this damn place."

"I don't remember anyone electing you Keeper of klunk, slinthead," Ender snapped back. "Just cuz Newt and Minho are sweet enough on you to let you sit in on these Council meetings don't mean you get a vote."

Thomas took a step toward Ender, but Alby stamped his boot. "Shut it. Rose, you have anything more to say?"

She crossed her arms and shook her head. She had seen enough to map out the trajectory—no point in wasting any more of their time.

"Ender, we know your vote," Alby said and turned to his right. "Gally?"

The Builder's red face had tempered to its usual sun-warmed tan, and his shock had melted into something more like regret. "I'm sorry, Rose. I like you—I actually do—even if you have shuck taste in men, but I gotta follow rules. Everything we got now is cuz we follow them. I vote same as I did for Thomas. I vote banishment."

Rose would be lying to herself if she didn't admit Gally's vote hurt. They weren't exactly friends, but he had spent weeks looking out for her at the showers, taught her how to swing an axe, treated her respectfully in the dark orbit of the bonfire, but she guessed none of that mattered in the end. She rubbed her scar.

Alby looked to his left. "Newt?"

"I stand by what I said before. Rose should be a Runner, plain and simple."

She fought the urge to kiss him again since she didn't need to shift any remaining allies to the opposition. Instead, she offered him a grateful smile, and her hand dropped from her throat.

Alby continued his tally. "Anil?"

The Bagger appraised her with the same cool eyes he always did. "She is a Runner already. I see no reason to change that."

"Winston?"

"Banishment."

"Preston?"

"Banishment."

"Zart?"

He turned his doleful eyes toward her and shrugged one shoulder, as if this was all no big deal and nothing personal. "Sorry, Rose. I vote banishment."

Rose felt fingers questing for her hand. Thomas gripped her tightly as the vote had begun to tip heavily in favor of banishment. One more vote would do her in.

Thomas leaned toward her ear, his breath coiling inside its shell. "I'll never let you go again. They'll have to banish both of us."

She caught his gaze and finally found the support she had so desperately needed from him. In spite of everything, Rose felt warm. "Thomas…" she breathed.

"Frypan?"

Rose glanced to the burly Cook. She knew he was a stickler for rules, especially in his Kitchen, so she didn't have much hope. She squeezed Thomas' hand.

"She's a shuck Cook," the Keeper of the Cooks groused. "She'd make a better Runner anyway."

Rose hadn't realized she'd been holding her breath until it came out in a forceful stream.

Alby turned to Clint and repeated his question, and Rose inhaled again slowly, as though she would need every last ounce of breath to survive her mentor's answer. Spending the last few days working for the man had shown Rose how much he deserved his role as Keeper of the Med-jacks, and she realized that whatever his answer was, it would directly shape her view of herself. Clint's opinion mattered to her because she looked up to him. If he didn't find worth in her, what the shuck good was she?

"I need her," Clint said directly to her. "Rose could have folded today, could have given up on Minho like the rest of us shuckheads. She didn't. She's a Med-jack. She's my Med-jack."

In spite of her pledge not to cry, Rose allowed a tear to overflow the dam in her eyes. She remembered his scathing words to her that very morning, remembered the heavy weight of disappointment lacing his tone. She had earned back his trust. Whatever else this vote would bring, she had one good thing from it.

The rest of the Council turned toward their leader, the last one in the room who had a vote to be tallied. Ender looked smug; Newt looked strangely calm. For Alby's part, he looked the same unreadably stoic man he always was.

"Your vote, Alby?" Newt said slowly.

Alby stepped forward and circled Rose. He appraised every inch of her as though his eyes could measure her worth as easily as a scale could measure her weight.

"Me? I don't want you to be a Runner, but that really ain't my call to make. Truth is, she's right. If Gally hadn't held back Thomas, this slinthead here wouldn't've gone in the Maze neither. She made the wrong call for the right reasons, and I can't banish her for that."

Ender threw his hands in the air. "What the hell is going on in here? I don't understand, it's simple: you break Rule Three, you're banished. What are we still talking about?"

"You didn't banish me," Thomas said.

"Not for lack of trying," Gally grunted.

Ender pinched the bridge of his nose like he was staving off a headache. "One vote left, and you all know what Minho would pick. You can count him for banishment. Tie broken."

"She saved his bloody life," Newt countered. "Don't be so quick to put words in his mouth—you know he hates that."

"Besides," Frypan added, "he made Thomas a Runner last time. Voted him Keeper, in fact."

Ender let out a ragged puff of air between his pale lips. "Yeah, difference is Minho hates this bitch almost as much as I do."

It happened simultaneously. Newt and Thomas punched the Slopper in his face, one fist of each landing on both of the Keeper's cheeks and squashing his face like a sandwich.

"Don't be rude," Newt scolded as he pulled back his hand and flexed it.

"Your vote's been tallied. You can leave now, Ender," Alby ordered, his stern brow betraying his perfect indifference for the first time all night.

The boy's face was scarlet with rage, and he shook his head furiously, jiggling his injured cheeks with an audible flap. His hands were in fists at his sides, and Alby eyed him carefully as he held out one flat palm to hold Anil back.

"I don't understand any of you shucking shanks anymore," Ender slobbered. "She's got you so twisted up, you don't know which way is up. One broad gets all tarted up in her little sex suit, and you all just fall all over her hoping to get laid. It's pathetic."

"One more word, and you'll spend the night in the Slammer," Alby warned.

It wasn't over—Rose knew it wasn't over—but the Keeper of the Sloppers stormed out of the Hall all the same, slamming the door so hard the planks rattled against their nails.

After a minute, Newt finally ventured, "Doesn't it matter if we kicked him out or not, the vote is still tied."

"The other Gladers will expect a decision come morning. We can't put it off," Alby said. He approached Rose, and with one long look, he grabbed her wrist and urged her toward the door. "Come on."

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"We need Minho's vote. Newt's right, we can't cast it for him, or I'd never hear the end of it."

"I don't want to," Rose said, trying to jerk her arm away.

Fear, she felt fear again. It was different than what she had felt in the Slammer when she was drowning in blood. And it wasn't exactly fear of banishment either—just this morning she had been ready to meet that challenge without a formal vote to go on. What then? Fear of something much more paralyzing than a labyrinth of monsters or faceless Creators.

Fear of rejection.

It was the only thing she could think of, but why Minho's approval mattered, Rose couldn't say. She just couldn't face him, especially when deep down she believed Ender was right—that Minho harbored some kind of hatred for her, or, at the very least, the Before Rose. She didn't want to see him, to hear him put the nail in her coffin.

Alby grunted. "I didn't ask you if you wanted to. You need to hear it."

Reluctantly, Thomas let her other hand go, and Rose felt the deep chill of the night settle under her skin.

"I'll be right here when you get back," he called after her.

Alby and Rose headed further along the rambling Homestead, and right before they reached the door to the Med-hut, he stopped. "You still want to follow me?"

"Huh?"

"I used to have total control here, before you, Rose," he said, his eyes on the toe of his boot now scuffing the threshold before the door. "I let a little of it up tonight."

Her words to him a few days ago surged back. _I respect you, Alby, and how much you care about all of us, I really do, but if you want to be a leader of anybody, you'd know that doesn't come from total control. People have to want to follow you._

Alby had let a little of it up. For her.

"I'd follow a leader like that anywhere," she said.

It could have been a trick of the light, but Alby might have smiled. "Good that. Now can you do something for me?"

"Anything."

"Try not to piss off the guy who could feed you to the Grievers."

She was doomed.

* * *

 _A/N: I will warn you ahead of time, the next chapter has the first of the smut—yeah, there's lots coming because I'm a ho like that. As such, in order to comply with this site's strict rules about mature content, I will only post part of the chapter, and you will have to read the rest on my Wattpad account (remaining chapters will continue to be posted here unless they are also smutty). You can find the story under the same name as this one, and I suggest you bookmark it. Things are about to get a lot darker and a LOT sexier, so buckle up._

 _Thank you to all my readers. You've been so supportive! I hope I continue to live up to your expectations._


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter Fifteen**

 _Jay Park & Ugly Duck – Ain't No Party Like an AOMG Party_

 _A/N: We're at the halfway point, folks. As you know, this story is labeled mature, and this chapter is the_ first _reason why. Shit's about to get real. Blindfolds and earmuffs available here for my young or bashful readers—you've been warned._

* * *

Rose wasn't sure what she expected on the other side of the Med-hut door, but it wasn't this.

Minho was stretched across the cot, his chest and abs on full display as he tucked his arms behind his head, pulling each muscle taut. Rose had seen him shirtless before in passing, especially on very hot days, but this exhibition was different. There was time now, time to admire him. And there was no way to avoid the masterpiece that was Minho's body.

If nothing else, Running had been good to his physique. Minho's broad shoulders tapered down into a slender waist in long, lean lines that compelled her eyes downward. From the swell of his pecs to the definition of his abs and the subtle jut of his hip bones, Rose finally had to appreciate how the man had earned his inflated ego.

In the warmth of the lantern light, his sun-worshipped skin glowed, and she suspected if she dared to touch it, it would burn hot. The only thing that marred the expansive bronze sea was a blazing white square of bandage peeking above the low-slung sheet over his left hip. But all that beauty paled in comparison to the exquisite V inside his hips that dipped just below those cursed sheets, a belt of muscle framing a trail of short black hairs that made Rose bite her lip.

That damned Runner was too keen to miss it, and his cheeks dimpleds.

Alby cleared his throat, and Rose jumped. How could this get any more humiliating?

"How ya feelin'?" Alby asked.

"Sore, but I can't complain right now." Minho shot a pointed look to Rose.

Pleasantries out of the way, the Council leader dove right in. "I'm here to get your vote on Rose. She broke Rule Three, and it's split five to five whether she stays or goes."

For the first time, the cocky smile on Minho's face faltered. He lowered his hands to his side as though he were suddenly self-conscious. "I'm the tiebreaker."

"'Fraid so."

Minho looked away as he said over his shoulder, "Give us a minute, would ya, Alby?"

 _Shit._

As Rose's body went ramrod straight, Alby headed for the door, offering her the smallest of nods. When the latch clicked into place, only then did the Runner venture to look at her again.

"So," Minho said.

"So?"

He quirked a brow. "You saved me."

Rose shrugged, trying to find anything in the room to distract her from the length of Minho's body. Somehow the Med-hut felt like the least interesting room in the Glade, with even less to see than the damn Slammer. "I guess."

"I knew you had a thing for me." One dimple reappeared, and, at the same time, so did Rose's annoyance.

"Ugh, do you have any redeeming qualities at all?"

"You mean besides being fast, smart, and built like a god?" Minho swept one had along the languid line of his torso, his fingers coming to rest next to his damned hips.

"Alby!" Rose started to shout, but Minho's hand grabbed hers, cutting her off mid-cry.

He turned her hand over, his fingers prodding the bandages as he noted the constellations of blood that had soaked through the cotton. There was a surprising measure of worry in his voice as he said, "What did those slintheads do to you?"

"Nothing," Rose answered, snatching her hand back and folding both behind her.

"Then why were you screaming like that? I could hear you in here."

"That wasn't me. That was Ender," she replied as she did her best to sound lighthearted.

A few heartbeats passed before Minho answered. "He sounded terrified."

His dark eyes flicked to hers. He wasn't joking, but Rose felt compelled to, anything to distract from the probing look he was lavishing on her. "He is. He's terrified you won't banish me."

"Rose."

"I don't want to talk about it," she snapped, then more gently added, "I couldn't explain it anyway."

Minho propped himself up on the wedge of pillows gathered behind him, and he winced as the skin over his injured hip tightened. As he sat up, his abdomen crinkled in soft, shallow folds that Rose had the irrational urge to stroke. She thought she'd reached rock bottom in her well of shame, but lusting over a wounded man she could hardly stand was a new low. This time Minho either didn't notice her wanton stares or had the decency to ignore them.

Instead, his chocolate eyes searched her face as his voice softened. "Do you want me to banish you?" It wasn't a threat but an honest question. "Do you even want to be here with us?"

Rose had to look away from his sincerity. For some reason, it hurt, like Minho was looking for an excuse to let her go. "Do whatever you think is best for the Glade."

"I'm asking you what you want."

Rose's head snapped back. No one ever asked her what she wanted, least of all the Keeper of the Runners. Her heartbeat quickened and she bit her lip again. "I want to be a Runner."

Minho sagged back into his pillows. "I swear, you were sent here just to torture me. Why the hell do you want to go in there so bad?"

"Because it's where I belong. And because we both know we don't have a choice."

He sighed but at least there was some of his trademark mischief in the corners of his eyes again. Minho shimmied a little further down into the pillows and returned his hands behind his head. "Best I can offer is a test. You heal me, keep this scar off my perfect body, and I'll _consider_ finding a use for you in my Maze."

"Clint will want to—"

Minho shook his head emphatically. "No, it has to be you. Just you. If I can't Run again, you'll never get in the Maze. If I die, with my dying breath, I'll make sure you spend the rest of your days locked up in the Slammer, and you'll never get in the Maze."

Rose scowled. "That's a tad dramatic, don't you think? Seems a little unfair for somebody who just started her job a few days ago."

"I have to know what you're made of. And how bad you want it."

Rose sensed a double entendre, but she doubted that was the whole of it, but she nodded all the same. "What about banishment?"

Minho laughed. "You saved my life. Course I'm not going to banish you, woman."

"Then why should I agree to this at all?"

"Fine," he said, strategically arching his back to highlight the ripple of his ribs beneath his skin, "if you'd rather I banish you…"

Rose huffed.

"One more thing," Minho added. His tongue poked at the corner of his lips as his eyes roved over her pronounced cleavage and bare abdomen, settling on the flare of her hips against the skintight hug of her leggings. It seemed like a fair enough trade after the embarrassing liberties she had just taken with him, and Rose waited for him to finish his perusal. "Deal's off if you change your clothes."

Her jaw dropped. "You are literally the reason they invented the word 'shuck-face'."

The door to the Med-hut burst open, and Alby poked in his head. There was a tightness around his mouth that betrayed just a hint of worry. "Minho, your vote?"

The Runner looked to Rose with an arrogant cock of his head. "We have a deal, Doc?"

Rose released a long breath and nodded. She had the itchy feeling that she had just made a deal with the devil, but it was done.

Minho smiled broadly at his victory. "Just don't kill me now."

"I'm not that lucky," she grumbled.

With a defiant purse of his lips and jut of his chin, Minho said to Alby, "Tell those other slintheads she stays."

Alby flashed a grin before he caught himself and stowed it in favor of his practiced apathy. "Let's go, Rose."

She savored one last furtive look at that delicious V at Minho's hips and turned for the door.

"Oh, Alby," Minho added as an afterthought. "Make sure she doesn't spend the night in the Slammer. She's got to nurse me back to health come tomorrow, and I don't want no shuck-tired Med-jack taking care of this flawless body."

Alby narrowed his eyes and glanced from the eager patient to his reluctant nurse. "I'll see what I can do."

Back in the Council Hall, when Alby announced the Council's decision, some the boys who had voted against Rose seemed relieved they wouldn't have to shove her face-first into a hungry Maze. Gally even snagged a silent one-armed hug on his way out, startling just about everyone in the room.

Afterwards, Rose reveled in the barrage of sweaty embraces from her supporters, and as Newt's arms closed around her, she realized she might have finally done it—proven herself. She had gone through her own trial by fire, just as Thomas had when he had arrived, and she had come out on the other side with only a few third-degree burns. Rose only wished she could see Ender's face when the other Keepers delivered the news.

As promised, Alby approved her release from her prison cell, and Thomas insisted on walking her home. After the horrendous ordeal she had just suffered, Rose was more than a little obliging. And something about her success—and maybe even her visit with Minho—had charged her with a strange anxious energy. She craved company, craved another's touch. She let Thomas' arm drape around her waist as he led her from the Council Hall back to her house, let his middle finger idly stroke the bump of her pelvis through the thin fabric of her pants.

A haphazard strand of red lights blinked across the darkened canopy all along the path to Rose's hut, as though every beetle blade in the Glade waited just for her. Several more marked the four corners of her hut, patiently observing every knead of Thomas' fingers now tracing the top of her ass. She might have been unnerved by their stares if she didn't feel so damn invincible—and so damn hungry.

She didn't have to invite Thomas into her room—he already knew she would. Rose barely had time to close the door before he shoved her against it, his hands gripping the sides of her face as his mouth latched onto hers. Her breath rushed out of her and into him as she threw herself into the kiss, her hands pulling his hips to hers so there wasn't a breath between them. The moment Thomas ground obligingly against her, Rose purred into his mouth, and it spurred his tongue deeper. She was so greedy for him. She needed more. She had to have more.

His lips broke from hers and Rose groaned, her fingers hooking on the waist of his pants as she silently begged for him to come back. Her hands inched under the hem of his shirt and played about the firm skin at his hips, questing for a dimpled belt of muscle that she couldn't seem to find. She hid her disappointment beneath a breathy sigh against Thomas' neck.

"I'm sorry about everything I said," Thomas whispered as he nuzzled his nose along the length of her cheekbone. He kissed her just below her ear, nipping her lobe before savoring the tender flesh just under her jaw. "I'd trust you with my life."

"Shut up and kiss me," Rose demanded breathlessly as her arm snaked between his shoulder blades and pushed him back to her mouth. Her whole body thrummed like a string on her fiddle, and she arched the small of her back toward Thomas so he could play her.

His hands slid from her neck to her shoulders until they curled around her ribs and traced her open expanse of stomach. Rose didn't realize she was cold until she felt the fire of Thomas' hands at her waist, and it seeped into her, stoking an inferno in her core with every inch lower they crept. The tips of his fingers slipped just below the top of her leggings, and Thomas dragged his nails across the secret flesh there.

"Let me take care of you," he murmured into her ear and then licked a sensitive patch of skin along her neck.

* * *

 _A/N: Chapter continues on my Wattpad account. Regularly scheduling broadcasting will resume next chapter…_


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter Sixteen**

 _Zedd – Get Low (ft. Liam Payne)_

 _A/N: It's still a little hot in here. Allusions to naughty things; peek between fingers if you need to._

* * *

Rose breezed into the Med-hut shortly after breakfast with a grin splitting her face. Even if she forgot about her night with Thomas, she would have been smiling from the sour look Ender had gifted her at breakfast; it was satisfying on another level.

"Morning, boss," she sing-songed as she waltzed through the door.

"Morning," answered both Clint and Minho at the same time. The two Keepers exchanged quizzical looks as Rose deposited an elegantly wrapped breakfast on Minho's stomach with a careless thud.

She joined Clint at the counter, still grinning from ear to ear.

"You got that cat-that-ate-the-canary look," Clint observed with a suspicious brow. He pinched Rose's chin between his thumb and forefinger and craned her head from side to side as he examined her. "You've got some color in your face and your eyes are brighter. I take it you had a good night last night?"

Rose leaned forward and whispered, "You can tell that?"

"Well, I figured since…" Clint said before he trailed off, his eyes darting back and forth as he came to an alternate conclusion. In a stern hiss, he added, "Rose, you didn't."

"What are you guys talking about?" Minho garbled through a mouth full of pancake.

"Nothing," Clint responded immediately, never taking his eyes off his Med-jack. She knew the look well enough by now—the disapproving parent.

Rose combated his chastisement with another smile as she extracted a little bottle of faintly green liquid from her bag. She waggled it in front of her mentor, the concoction sloshing noisily against the cork. "Go on, take it. It's something I worked on the last couple days. I wanted to give it to you, but I didn't think I'd get a chance, you know, with everything going on."

Clint maintained his grim stare, but he did take the bottle. "What is it?"

"Antiseptic. I got the recipe out of one of your books. Shouldn't burn as much as the other ones."

"You couldn't have used that one on me?" Minho complained. "Because that other klunk you used felt like lava."

Rose doubted she would ever forget the piercing tenor of Minho's screams, and just the thought bristled the back of her neck. She shook her head, as much to disagree with him as to dispel the memory.

"Next time, don't let a Griever slice you open, dummy. This is more for _small_ cuts and abrasions."

"It's not like I planned on that," Minho grumbled. "They're hardly ever out during the day."

Rose faced the Runner, her hands on her hips.

Still shirtless despite the cool morning—he had to be doing it on purpose at this point.

"You knew yesterday was Day Three," she scolded. "You shouldn't have been in there—they literally carved you a warning."

"It's my _job_ ," Minho protested.

"Yeah, to be a professional slinthead."

"Well," Clint said, walking between them, "this is going to be a fun day. Instead of annoying me, shall we test your recipe out on you, Rose?"

She blinked. "What?"

"Your hands. Let me see them."

Rose had forgotten all about the atrocities on her palms until Clint unwound her bandages. They were bruised and raw, the pricks scabbed over while the scrapes were still tender, especially where the skin had flaked back. Clint uncorked her bottle and dabbed a thin layer of liquid over her palms.

As Rose had hoped, there was no sting, and her Keeper nodded with approval as he began to rewrap. "Not bad, rookie. You know this numbskull over here won't let me examine him? Says he'll only let you do it—something about some shuck deal. Care to explain?"

"Sounds serious," Rose ribbed. "How about a lobotomy? That should resolve all of his issues at the same time."

"Rose," Clint snapped, and her smile faded. His eyes were anvils holding her down, and his tone was just as heavy. "Can you do this?"

She turned to the Med-jack, sufficiently sobered from her morning joy, and answered, "I promised I would."

After a second, Clint nodded. "At the first sign of anything weird, you bring me in, I don't care how much this moron complains."

"Agreed."

The Med-jack tugged the collar of his shirt and cleared his throat before he grabbed his medical bag and headed toward the door. "You two are already giving me a headache. I'm gonna take a walk and let you bicker in privacy, but your shenanigans better be over by the time I get back."

"No promises," Minho called after him.

The thought of being alone with the Runner so soon wasn't exactly what Rose had in mind this early, especially when he refused to cover any part of his unreasonably attractive body, but then again, the man had designed this whole charade as some sort of test for her, and if she couldn't get a hold of herself, she wouldn't pass, which meant she'd never get back in the Maze.

Rose took a seat in the furthest corner of the room, choosing the lengthiest book on the shelves and propping it open with her back to her patient. The air was cool but thick, and Rose chafed under its urgent hands. Every ruffle of sheets, every exhale, every soft grunt thundered in her ears. She felt like she'd been reading for ages, but she hadn't made it through one full paragraph—either because of the dense material or because of the half-naked man behind her, she couldn't tell.

A plate clattered onto the ground and she whirled around. Minho was sitting up against his wedge of pillows, his hands folded innocently in his lap, one eyebrow raised high. Rose scowled and turned back to her book. A fork boomed next as it tumbled across the floor. She rolled her head back and let out a long sigh.

"It's going to be awful hard to take care of me when you keep ignoring me," her patient observed.

"I'll check you out when I'm ready," Rose volleyed over her shoulder, flipping a page just to underline her point.

"Pretty sure you've already done _that_ several times this morning."

Her cheeks glowed. God help her, she had. Rose was beginning to wonder about her own mental health at this point; maybe she'd hit her head last night in the Slammer and she was too concussed to remember. Thank the heavens the man didn't know how she had finished her night yesterday because she could barely survive her own mortification at her fantasy, let alone his.

Rose's only consolation was the fact that Minho had shamelessly checked her out, too. Why should she let him wield all the power here? Damnit, she was his Med-jack and would be until he healed enough to get back into the Maze—which she would rather be sooner than later. She could literally do anything she wanted to him, and he would be totally at her mercy, a least for a little while longer. Her knuckles whitened as her fingers crinkled the pages at the thought.

Anything she wanted…

Rose snapped her book shut. There was no concealing the stubborn rouge on her cheeks, but this time she didn't try. She was going to even the playing field once and for all. Without a word, she walked to the right side of Minho's bed, her pelvis bumping against the mattress, and stood over him. He watched her with an edge of suspicion until her gaze locked on his.

"Let's just get this out of the way, huh?" she said.

Though his sheet was already slung low enough to expose the bandage at his hip, Rose tugged it a bit lower, exposing more of that magnificent V just because she was a glutton for punishment. Though she had expected to find the hem of his underwear, she was honestly not surprised to find Minho wasn't wearing any. If he'd been planning that surprise for her later, Rose preempted it, and it was incredibly satisfying to know she'd one-upped the King of One-Upsmanship.

Minho's muscles tensed instantly, sending him catapulting upright. His hands clamped down on hers, pinning her one palm awkwardly against the outside of his thigh and the other against the basin of his abs.

"Woah, what do you think you're doing, shuck-face?" he demanded.

"Doctor things," Rose answered blandly, turning her face away to conceal her laugh.

She could have just as easily walked to the other side of the bed. She could have just as easily left the covers up. She knew it; he knew it.

Minho didn't release her, and every second he held her hands against him, it grew tougher to ignore the solid muscle of his thigh or the twitch of his abs nestled at the top of his pelvis.

"I promise I'm not going to take your virtue," Rose assured. "Besides, remember this was all your idea. If you'd rather I get Clint…"

His hands vanished from her in an instant, and Minho sagged back into his pillows, those damn sculpted arms tucked behind his head once again, the perfect frame to his easy confidence. His voice was measured now, though Rose could still hear his breathing. A hint of a smile played at the corner of his mouth. "I see what you're doing."

Rose blinked innocently. "Yeah, what you asked."

"Nice try, but you're not going to get rid of me this easy, chickie."

She frowned and wrinkled her nose. "You gotta admit I was close."

"Yeah, but I told you, I'll always win." Then, Minho offered her a languid Cheshire grin. "Your hand's still on my thigh."

"Son of a—" Rose said, snapping her hand back and squeezing it tight enough that they both heard her knuckles crack.

It was Minho's turn to laugh now, but he didn't try to hide it. He propped up his left leg, the sheet pooling over his groin as the powerful limb freed itself. Heaven help her, it looked like it had been chiseled from marble. Rose narrowed her eyes at him.

"Go on, finish your 'doctor things,'" Minho instructed.

 _Remember, Rose, this is all part of his stupid test. You pass this, you get in the Maze free and clear._

She tipped her hips forward as she examined the skin around the bandage. This close to him, Minho smelled faintly of copper and pancake and a hint of garlic from her medicine, but underneath it all, he smelled like a man—primal and powerful and rugged. Thankfully, she couldn't detect even a whiff of the rot that had plagued Cat.

Rose closed her eyes as she commanded her fingers to do one thing— _and one thing only, Rose!_ She inspected the flesh around the tape, checking for tenderness or flinching, but Minho didn't react except for the softest of grunts when she prodded the skin at the edge closest to the trail of black hairs flaring around the sheet.

"I've got to check your wound, so don't freak out when I pull back your bandage," she ordered.

Minho replied with a poke of his tongue inside his cheek.

Rose peeled back the edge of the tape slowly, careful not to tug at the wound. As she waited for the cotton patch to reveal Minho's fate, she found herself praying there were no galaxies below. Her breath caught and held as the square rolled back.

When she didn't move after a minute, Minho asked nervously, "How's everything look, Doc?"

Rose let out a long, relieved gust of breath across his hip, and Minho shifted sharply against the mattress. The edges of the wound were red, but they had crusted with a fledgling scab. Either Clint or Jeff had put in a couple of stitches yesterday, and the skin seemed to be knitting together nicely.

Without thinking, Rose braced her hands at the side of the mattress and dipped her head down closer to catalogue every detail of the healing injury.

Another grunt, this one unmistakably louder and one step away from an outright groan.

"Don't lean across me like that."

Rose froze. "Sorry, does it hurt?"

"That's not—" Minho's right hand curled around her hip, his thumb gripping the top of her pelvis and his last couple fingers grazing dangerously close to the top of her ass. "—a good idea."

 _Oh. Fuck._

Two sentences, with just enough time in between them for Rose to realize she had made an enormous mistake. She had completely forgotten she was wearing her mandated crop-top, and as she bent over Minho, she became acutely aware of the fact that her stomach was pressed against his. She could feel heat at her face, her neck, down her back, between their bodies. Between her legs.

 _Oh, fuck._

One sentence this time was all she needed to cement her in position. Minho's hand slid across the plane of her rigid back, his fingertips taking a languorous trek along her spine to the waist of her leggings.

"Your skin is so hot," he observed dreamily.

His words were like ribbons of silk unspooling along her body. Rose felt naked, which only reminded her that Minho was, that parts of her were, and they were already ironed together.

 _Thomas! Thomas! Thomas!_

The other Runner's fingers had just been _inside_ her last night. What the hell was wrong with her? She needed air. She needed space.

But Rose didn't _want_ any of that. She wanted to stay right here, breathing in masculinity and unfettered hormones. She wanted Minho's hands just a few inches lower.

The shrill cry of a supply run launched Rose across the room. She stood up so quickly a muscle in her back spasmed, and Minho's fingers scratched her skin, leaving a burning red welt down the small of her back.

He sat up on his forearms as he squinted out the window. His eyes narrowed. "We never get a Box in the middle of the week."

"I'll go check it out," Rose said as she tugged her crop-top down.

But Minho continued pushing himself up despite his rumbles of pain. "Help me up. I need to see what's coming."

"Minho, no," Rose directed, one hand pushing him back onto his pillows. She circled the bed to re-bandage his cut, tapping the edges of the tape down with extra emphasis. "Your wound is healing. You're not tearing that thing open again and blaming it on me."

"But what if they need me?" he practically whined.

"Then I guess they'll come visit, won't they? Plus, you're not wearing anything, you slinthead." Minho's cheeks showcased the faintest sweep of a blush. "Now, stay here or else I'll tie you down."

He cocked an eyebrow, his snarky response written all over his face.

Rose sighed before hurrying out the door into the center of the busy Glade. Just about every Glader had stopped what he was doing to congregate around the whirring Box. Muscles twitched and eyes shifted as rumors and conspiracies snowballed amongst the teenagers. Whatever it was, it was almost here.

Rose found a spot up front between Jeff and Newt, who was busy wringing the neck of his garden rake like it had personally offended him.

"Think it's another Greenie?" she asked.

"I'm not sure what it is, but I doubt it's bloody good. First, Minho gets carved up like a shucking turkey by the Grievers in broad daylight, and now the Box is coming up two days early. I don't trust it."

Though Rose had only been in the Glade for a little more than a month, she had already gotten used to its patterns and rhythms. Newt was right—this was off. It felt like another message, and her stomach clenched as the elevator slammed to a stop at the top of the hole. Silence reigned as no one made a move toward the Box.

No cries echoed up, no animal noises either. Whatever lurked down below, it wasn't alive.

Newt dropped his rake and edged toward the lip, leaning over it carefully. When he deemed it safe, he hopped down with a tremendous rattle. After a moment, he called up, "Looks like some kind of medicine."

Gally appeared beside Rose, his favorite axe slung over his shoulder. "That it? The Med-jacks order any medicine?"

"Clint might have put something in when Max came up, but why would they send it up early? The Creators don't care about anybody's health here," Rose spat bitterly as the memory of her begging for Cat's life resurfaced.

A white and blue box came whizzing through the air, and Rose caught it at the last second. She flipped it a few times in her hand. Most of the text on it was gibberish to her, long words of impossible ingredients and nonsensical syllables; she couldn't even pronounce the brand name. Rose read out loud the first legible thing she could find: "'Oral contraceptive'?"

Jeff just shrugged. "Never heard of it."

She kept reading. "'This product, like all oral contraceptives, is intended to prevent pregnancy.'"

The world stilled.

Rose breathed hard. There was more to read, but she couldn't even if she wanted to, her hands were trembling so mercilessly. Blind rage filled her; she felt nauseous from it.

This was a sick joke, not by one of the boys—or the pills would have come up with the regular supply run—but by the sadists who had put them in the center of this maze to begin with. It was another message just for Rose.

They were watching her. They knew what she had done with Thomas. They knew what she had thought about doing.

That would have been bad enough, but Rose realized there was another message underlying all of that: They didn't mind. They wanted her to.

They wanted her to.

Hushed voices encompassed her, penetrated her, like they were whispering to her, not about her.

"Who's she fucking?"

"Probably everyone."

"Not you, shuck-face, that's for sure."

"Maybe now she will."

"Shucking Creators ain't all bad after all."

"Nice of them to give us something we can actually use."

Laughter. Snorts. Condescension. Misogyny.

Rose grabbed a few of the pill boxes and hurled them at the faceless boys that surrounded her.

"Fuck you!" she screamed to them.

"Fuck you!" she screamed to whomever could hear.

She spun in a wild circle, middle fingers raised high. She didn't know where the cameras were, but she was sure they hadn't missed her show—she would make sure they didn't.

"Fuck you, Ava!"

She wished she had more things to throw—rocks, cannonballs, nuclear warheads. Rose wanted to tear everything these monsters had built right down to the studs and then burn the ashes. She wanted them to watch that, wanted them to come as undone as she was.

She was steeped in humiliation, boiling in fury, drowning in shame. If she stood there one more minute, some of the other Gladers would definitely be buried in the Deadheads by day's end. Rose stomped toward the Homestead, practically razing the grass behind her.

Halfway across the Glade, Newt clamped down on her shoulder and then immediately yanked his hand back, as though her wrath had literally scalded him. "Rose, stop! Where are you going?"

"Back to work," she spat over her shoulder as she continued to plunge forward.

"You should take a few minutes—"

"Don't tell me what I should do, Newt. I'm done. Please just let me be done."

"Okay. But before you go…" His voice was softer now, though no less urgent.

Rose stopped mid-stride but refused to turn around. Her chest ached, her eyes burned, and her head spun, but she forced the last reasonable part of herself to listen.

Newt seemed to choose his question carefully, as though what he wanted to ask and what he needed to ask were two different things. "Who's Ava?"

The question both surprised and infuriated Rose for reasons she couldn't pinpoint. She racked her brain for the name, or at least where it came from, but couldn't pull up an image to go with it. The answer was familiar though, almost on a cellular level, but Rose could only feel it—she couldn't place it.

"Who?"

"Back there, you screamed her name."

"I don't remember that," she snapped, which had a ring of truth to it. Blinding embarrassment and rage had scrubbed most of the last few minutes from her memory. It was only Rose, a pile of pills, and a ring of leering, disembodied heads.

Rose was too confused and hurt to stand there any longer on display in her "sex suit," as Ender had so succinctly put it, and explain the multitude levels of fucked up that was her life. Without a glance back at her friend, she headed for the Med-hut.

She realized as soon as she burst through the door that she should have taken Newt's advice and gone home. Minho straightened on the bed at the sight of her, eager for news she didn't want to give.

"So," he asked expectantly, "what came up?"

"Nothing that'll ever concern you," she shot back.

"Calm down."

Rose saw red, actual clouds of scarlet so opaque they might be called curtains. They wrapped around her, suffocating her even as she fought them back. "Calm down? Who the fuck tells a woman to calm down when she's already pissed off?"

"I don't know. I don't remember any, shuck."

Minho blinked at the bite of her anger, and Rose realized she was misdirecting, but her rage was too overwhelming to care. She snatched the chair in the far corner and reopened her medical book. It may as well have been in hieroglyphics, but she went through the motions, turning the pages when she thought it was appropriate, anything to normalize the world that had just shifted on its axis.

Eventually, the silence became untenable, and Minho said softly, "You all right, Doc?"

Rose nodded over her book. If she answered, she would cry, and Minho was the last person in the Glade she wanted to see her cry. Her anger began to fade and hopelessness scurried in on little paws, cold and unwavering and as inescapable as the Maze that surrounded them.

Nothing of her life here was her own. She was being manipulated so cleverly that every decision she thought she made—good or bad—had been scripted somehow.

And she'd never even realized it had been happening.

Were they all in on it—Alby, Minho, Newt? Was Thomas? Was she the only plaything here? Was Cat even really dead? No, Rose was sure of that at least—that smell could not have been faked. But it could have been an accident. Still, if he was a fellow actor and friend, wouldn't the Creators have saved him?

Everything was upside-down, and Rose had never felt less sure of herself.

Another minute passed. Another page turned.

"Rose, talk to me."

It was the most sincere she had ever heard Minho. Teasing, she expected. Bickering, too, maybe even shouting. Concern, she didn't. It only added another layer of guilt to her heart. Words piled up behind Rose's lips, threatening to burst forth, to share every excruciating detail she felt about everything and everyone, and her levy wouldn't hold much longer. One more kind word, and she would have no choice but to unleash the tidal wave of failures she'd been holding back.

The door to the Med-hut opened, the black and gray mop of her Keeper emerging from the brilliant light of the stubbornly beautiful day outside. Clint found Rose sulking in the corner and immediately pulled up alongside her, nearly whispering, "I heard what happened."

"What happened?" Minho repeated.

"It's not a good time, Clint," Rose replied. Her warning was unmistakable, but the Med-jack refused to heed it.

"There's never a good time in the Glade." His eyes appraised her as clinically as a patient's chart, and from the knit of his dark brows, Rose could tell he'd already made his diagnosis, and she wasn't going to like it. As swiftly as parent ripping off a bandage, he reminded gently, "Remember what I told you about folding?"

Rose slammed her book closed and leveled her fiery eyes on him. "What would you like me to do then, huh? They're breaking me down, Clint, piece by piece. They're going to take everything from me."

"You're letting them."

Clint made it sound so simple, like with a flick of a switch, Rose could forget all of the messed-up shit that was raining down on her. But it wasn't simple—nothing in the Glade was, especially for her. None of them could understand, and most hadn't even tried. For the boys, Rose was merely the token girl: there to look pretty, to smile and to flirt, and to use—they'd damn near said as much. Whatever other role Rose had dreamed of holding in the Glade, she was sorely mistaken as the Creators had so graciously reminded her.

"You don't understand," she said with a sorrowful shake of her head. "You can't. When's the last time everyone stopped what they were doing just to stare at your legs? How about the last time you needed a guard to take a shower? What about the time everyone refused to talk to you because you kissed someone? Did the Maze ever call your name, Clint? Did somebody ever _kill_ you? All in all, I thought I was holding up pretty well. Sorry for disappointing you again."

Clint's mouth hung open. For a moment, Rose even imagined she saw the prick of a tear in one of his eyes. "I didn't—you didn't. I'm sorry. I was just—"

"Just trying to help, I know," she said, slouching down empty of feelings and resting her face on the cool leather of the book cover. She smelled musty cupboards and expired medicines. She tasted defeat.

Clint stood up and bowed his head. After a lengthy stare at her, his hand paused at the door handle before he added, "You're not alone, Rose, and you're not a disappointment."

 _But why do I feel like it?_

The Med-jack disappeared with only the wooden thud of the door in its frame to announce his exit. Rose closed her eyes and breathed. Her limbs ached as though she had just run several miles at record speed. She was heavy—she'd never felt so heavy—and she was surprised her chair didn't give out under her.

"Rose?"

She opened her eyes. She'd been so awash in self-pity, she'd forgotten someone else was in the Med-hut. Her eyes darted to the bed where Minho stared back at her. He looked different, but she couldn't put her finger on how. Where his features were usually sharp and controlled, like he was always trying to work his best angles, he was all softness now, as though the sunlight filtering through the window had blurred his edges, inviting her to him.

"I take it that wasn't a new Greenie."

Rose shook her head, still not trusting her voice.

Minho let out a long breath that sounded more like a hum. "Bastards really have it in for you, I guess. You must'v done something to _really_ piss them off in your past life. Sounds like your M.O."

His usual provocative tone acted like billows for the dwindling embers in Rose's heart, and she straightened in her chair.

It did not escape his notice, and the corner of his mouth twitched. "Why are you even here?"

The safety of their customary banter oiled Rose's lips. "Our deal. I have to take care of you, remember, or you'll lock me up and throw away the key."

Minho leveled his eyes more firmly at her now, and the air intensified. "That's klunk, and you know it. You're here because you don't want to be alone."

"I'd rather be alone than with you," she grumbled. It didn't even faze the Runner.

"And yet here you are. You want me to distract you from whatever those shuck Creators just did to you, to make you feel anything other than hopelessness." He narrowed his gaze as though he had x-ray vision and could see right into Rose. "So, what will it be, huh? Anger? Your pity-party is pathetic. You've been begging us to treat you as an equal, and now you want to be coddled."

The muscles in Rose's neck tensed and her teeth ground.

"Curiosity? If you want, I'll finally tell you about the time we've already spent together in the Maze."

Her jaw slackened as her lips parted and she shifted her full attention to him.

"Excitement?"

Minho scooted back, the newly restored sheet gliding below his belly button to the top of his pelvis and revealing more of those enticing grooves than she had ever seen. He stared into her eyes as he ran his tongue lightly over the inside of his bottom lip. Rose's breath quickened.

"All three at once? Plenty of room on this bed for two." He patted the spot beside him, and for a split second, Rose did feel a rush of all three emotions, just as promised, before a fourth raced through her.

Laughter burst from her lips. She tipped her head back, unleashing little machine gun blasts that rained back down upon her. Minho was right. Damnit, he was right.

"Hey, I'm starting to feel a little self-conscious here," Minho complained as he tugged the sheet back up and tucked it firmly under his hips. "You careless slinthead, you're not supposed to laugh around a naked man. You have the worst bedside manner of any doctor ever."

"How is it that you are more aggravating than the damn Creators?" Rose wheezed, now doubling over at her waist as she giggled uncontrollably. She couldn't stop it, not even when it brought tears of laughter to her eyes, which gradually became tears of pain.

Rose was sobbing now, her face buried in her hands as she struggled to catch her breath. Her eyes burned from squeezing them so tightly, and her lips tasted of salty humiliation. And Minho was watching every awful second of it.

She thought about taking off, just as she had the first time he'd caught her crying. Minho couldn't pursue her this time—there were few left in the Glade who reasonably could. If she wanted, Rose could be in the Maze within minutes.

And yet here she sat, wiping her cheeks on the back of her hand and sniffling like a damn child.

"Rose, tell me what's going on." Minho's voice was as soft as it was earnest.

She didn't expect more kindness from him; she wasn't even sure she wanted it. She wanted to be pissed. She wanted to beat her fists against someone. She wanted someone else to feel as hurt as she felt.

"Oh, stop acting like you care," Rose scoffed as she raised her face from her hands. Minho blinked. "You tease me, you yell at me. You flirt with me, you push me away. I'm just another maze for you to puzzle out, something to entertain you when you're bored. You're no different than anyone else here, Minho. Well, I got good news for you. Those assholes on the other side of the Box sent up some pretty little pills that will let you all have all the sex you want with me without any of the consequences."

His body went rigid. "What."

"Lucky for us all, isn't it? And so nice to let everyone here know by delivering a shipment like a goddamn public service announcement. Made all the boys out there real happy."

Minho still hadn't moved. "Why would they—"

"Come on, think hard, genius," Rose snapped.

His body slackened, like a balloon slowly losing its air through a pinhole. Minho eased back into his pillows, his eyes drifting a million miles into space. His voice sounded almost as far away. "Did you? With Thomas?"

Was that hurt she heard?

It felt like there was a hand in her chest squeezing her heart. Rose reached for her neck, stroking her scar and willing herself to breathe. She had wanted someone else to share her hurt, and now Minho did, but instead of the satisfaction she had expected, Rose just felt like an asshole.

"No," she answered just as quietly, "not yet."

"'Not yet,'" Minho echoed, the words clinging to the sheet, to the mattress, to the filthy, tattered curtains.

Minho's eyes drifted back from whatever cosmic vacation they'd just taken to settle at the mounds of his own covered feet. "You know, I think maybe Clint should finish overseeing my recovery. Don't worry, I'll let you out of our deal. I'll even sweeten it for you. You can train in the Maze with Thomas while I'm out here. That'll give you two lots more time together."

Why did Rose feel the tears coming back?

"Minho, I'm sorry."

Eyes still fixed on his feet, he added indifferently, "Why are you apologizing? Come to think of it, why are you even upset? Seems to me the Creators did you a pretty sweet favor. You have no reason to wait now that you've got your magic pills."

"Stop."

Minho glanced out the window to see the morning had slipped by and it was nearing afternoon. "Couple hours, the Runners'll be back and you can tell Thomas the good news."

"Stop."

Suddenly, Rose didn't recognize the man on the bed anymore. Minho's voice sounded otherworldly. The strength of the panther that had always prowled within its depths had been caged—worse yet, euthanized. His was the voice of a ghost. Rose hated it, hated what she had just done.

More tears now, but Minho didn't pay them any mind.

His head rolled back into the pillows and turned away from her. "I'm tired. I think I'm just going to sleep for a bit. You know where the door is."

"Minho?" But he wouldn't answer her. "Minho."

Rose thought about going to him, making him look at her, making him respond to her—he always responded to her—but it wasn't fair to him. She had hurt him, on purpose, after he had tried to comfort her no less, and that made Rose no better than the people who had put them all in here. She didn't deserve a response. The fact that Minho was even willing to let her out of their deal was more generous than she had been with anyone this morning. He was a friend underneath it all, and Rose was a terrible person who never even noticed.

She left the Med-hut, sparing one last look at the boy she hated that she didn't hate at all.

* * *

Her room was empty except for the mountain of pills some nice Glader had stacked for her on her nightstand. Her hammock was still laid out on the floor, delicate crescent folds outlining the ghosts of the two bodies that had curled into each other last night. As Rose stood in her doorway, golden light warming the cinnamon walls as motes of dust drifted eerily downward, she felt alien, like an explorer unearthing the ruins of some tragic girl history had forgotten. None of this felt like hers, and for someone who had already lost everything, the effect was even more jarring.

Rose took a few tentative steps inside until she stood in the center of the room, somehow feeling more exposed than when she was in the center of the Glade. She thought of last night with Thomas, being up against the wall of this very room with all of his attention bearing down on her. And somebody had watched it all. Her knuckles cracked again, followed by her mind.

She tossed the table over, scattering pill boxes everywhere. She shook out the hammock, overturned her crate of supplies, crawled along the floor, stood on her tiptoes with her fingertips searching the roof joints for any sign of a camera. But Rose found none.

She remembered the sickly feeling of being watched every time she was in the woods, and she remembered the audience of red lights from the silver centipedes that had ringed her house last night. Then it dawned on her: that's how they watched her. Beetle blades. The Creators could come and go as they pleased, weasel their way into any room they wanted, hear every secret whispered behind closed doors and between sheets. Rose's skin crawled.

Her body leaden with defeat, she tucked herself into a corner, her legs high under her chin. Rose hugged her shins as she tried to make herself as small as possible. If she were lucky, she'd collapse in on herself like a dying star; none of her humiliations or failures would matter then.

She wished she still had a mother. She wished she'd never left the dock in her dreams. She needed someone to hold her, to smooth her hair and tell her it would all be okay.

Time passed. The room transitioned from gold to orange, from orange to red, from red to gray. At some point, Thomas came in. Without a word, he sat beside her, put one arm around her, and rested her head on his shoulder. Finally, the world faded to black.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter Seventeen**

 _Pentagon – Like This_

 _A/N: Happy "Death Cure" week. In honor of the movie coming out, here's a long, early chapter (with another to be posted Friday)._

 _PSA: As I mentioned, I'm not usually one for lyrics (if it jams, I jam, idc), but this song happened to come out in the midst of these heavy chapters, and I swear, it was written for Rose. Please watch the vid with the close captioning on—it's marvelous. I wish Rose could hear it, too. Maybe WICKED will let me pipe it into the Glade…_

* * *

He was running, arms pumping and chest heaving and breath puffing through dry lips in noisy gasps. His eyes were fixed somewhere ahead of him, and he ran toward it with single-minded determination. Rivulets of sweat stippled his brow, one bead running down from his wind-ruffled hairline and catching the corner of his dark eyebrow.

He was perfection—everything WICKED could hope for in an ideal Candidate, everything Rosalind wanted in a Target Subject.

At last he caught sight of her high above him. Rosalind smiled. A7 faltered. His toe snagged the concrete, sending him stuttering forward, but with a wheel of his arms, he righted himself, a tinge of pink capping his high cheekbones and the tips of his ears.

 _Directive 1.4 achieved._

It was even more satisfying than Rosalind had anticipated.

He narrowed his eyes in a challenge. This wasn't the first time they'd met. They knew the drill.

A7 wet his lips and tensed his forearms. More beads of sweat trickled down the sides of his face.

Challenge accepted.

As usual, Rosalind was at the disadvantage. From above, her options were limited. Her footsteps had to be precise or this would be the last time they met. Still, she kept pace, relying on her memorization of the Maze to ensure her safety. All those nights falling asleep under circular maps of its zigzags and whorls had paid off. At this point, she could probably run it in her sleep.

The red skirt of Rosalind's dress flapped at her knees as a stiff breeze bullied her back. A7 was winning; well, he always won. It wasn't supposed to be a race—that wasn't the reason she was here—but it always mutated into one, and Rosalind allowed it. It was hard to resist those cocky dimples.

They were almost to the end of the corridor, and she was gaining on A7 for the first time. A few more steps and she would overtake him.

And then he juked right.

Smug laughter reverberated off the concrete walls followed by one final jibe: "Better luck next time, beautiful."

 _Beautiful? Well, that was different_.

Every other race had ended the same way: "Better luck next time, shuck-face."

It shouldn't have mattered that A7 was gone—she had accomplished her objective for the day—but Rosalind couldn't help feeling a dash of disappointment as he left her standing alone in the ceaseless wind.

Beautiful…

* * *

 _Minho thought I was beautiful._

The rooster crowed, rousing Rose from the yellow-then-white sea. She didn't want to open her eyes. She had so much more she wanted to know, and she didn't want to leave her most elucidating dream yet. Her memory had unearthed more than a strange past connection to Minho and the fact that she had gone by her full name, Rosalind—it had unearthed a directive.

 _Directive 1.4 - Smile at Target Subject._

Subject of what? And who would make that a directive of any kind? What would even be the point? But not only had Rosalind gone along with it, she was pleased with its result—proud, even. Rose wanted—needed—to understand more.

But her brain was even less merciful than the Creators, and her eyelids creaked open without any extra answers appearing behind them.

Neither Rose nor Thomas had moved since they'd fallen asleep, and every muscle in her body ached. She unfurled her stiff limbs like a statue granted miraculous life, and Thomas followed suit as she lifted her head from his shoulder.

"Morning," he mumbled through a long stretch and even longer yawn.

"Hey," she returned with a small smile.

"You sleep all right?"

"I'm a little sore. Strange dreams," Rose admitted, and that was all she was willing to admit this early.

"Me too. Memories, I think, but not good ones." Thomas stretched his feet out in front of him before adding hesitantly, "Do you want to talk about last night?"

Rose stiffened, maybe even flinched, as she reigned in her emotions before they could run amok again. "I do, but not right now. I have to get ready."

"For what?"

She scowled as she stood up. "What do you mean? I'm a Med-jack, and Minho's my patient. I'm going to work."

"I thought you weren't doing that anymore? Isn't Clint taking over?"

Rose didn't remember telling Thomas that, nor anyone else; she'd been too ashamed. For a fleeting second, she imagined one of those beetle blades projecting her argument with Minho on the Walls for the whole Glade to watch as they snacked on popcorn and jeered her.

She worked to keep her voice measured, objective even. "Where'd you get a crazy idea like that?"

"I talked to Minho last night when I went to check on him. That's what he told me. He even said you'd be Running with me from now on. I thought we'd spend the day together and I could introduce you to the Maze."

Thomas' face was bright and eager, but Rose felt her heart flutter in her chest along with a strange surge of nausea. She shook her head. "I gotta get there right away. He's clearly delusional from infection."

Thomas put a hand on her forearm and squeezed. "Rose, it's okay to be scared of the Maze."

"That's not it," she insisted as she pulled back. "I know I'm supposed to be a Runner, that's what Rosalind used to do for whatever reason."

"Rosalind?"

"Me, the old me. Still me? I don't know, it doesn't matter. Look, the Creators practically told us it's what they want me to do, but right now I have a job to finish and a deal to uphold, so I just want to get through that first. I need to."

Thomas stared at her as though he was having trouble understanding her dialect. "Aren't you the same girl who's been begging anyone who would listen to let you into the Maze? We had an entire Gathering about it, and now that you have the chance, you're putting it off. Why, Rose?"

She had to get out of this conversation. The more questions Thomas volleyed at her, the fewer excuses she had—and they were excuses. How could she explain to him—her not-quite, sort-of boyfriend—that she wasn't supposed to run the Maze with him? Honestly, she wasn't even sure she could explain that to herself.

She looked to the door and offered him an apologetic frown. "We can talk about this tonight when I see you at dinner, okay? Promise me you won't Run alone."

"Come with me then," Thomas retorted in an eager whisper.

"I'm serious, Thomas. Run with Omar or Jonas or whoever. I need you to stay safe. With everything that happened to Minho, I don't trust it. I can't have you hurt, too." Rose reached for his hands and leaned in for a brief, awkward kiss. His lips were so cold and distant, she would have hardly recognized them as the same ones that had been all over her neck two nights ago. "See you tonight?"

Thomas nodded numbly and said, "And we're talking more about this."

It was misty out, a gauzy ribbon of fog wrapping around the trees and dulling the new morning verdure, but even it couldn't subdue Newt's tousled blonde mop. As Rose emerged, he stole a surreptitious glance inside, but she caught him.

"Yes, Thomas is inside. No, we didn't have sex," she groaned as she joined Newt's side.

Her friend looked a little sheepish but, at the same time, relieved. He bumped her shoulder with his as they walked down the forest path. "How are you feeling?"

"Pissed off," Rose answered. She'd been feeling many things, but after her dream last night, curiosity and ultimately rage had trumped all of them. "Feeling the need for some vengeance. I'm going to start working on it now."

"That so? Where are you going?"

"To do my job? I'm taking care of Minho."

He raised an eyebrow. "I thought Clint was doing that?"

Rose growled. "Why does everyone keep saying that?"

"Because that's what Minho's telling everyone. And I suppose I should offer you some congratulations. I hear you're a Runner now."

Her response surprised them both. "That stubborn, arrogant... asshat!"

"I thought that's what you wanted?"

It was. It wasn't. She and Minho were supposed to do it together. It was what the Maze wanted—what the Maze wanted, not what she wanted.

"It's not really about what I want. When it comes down to it, I don't have a choice. At any rate, I made a deal with Minho about this first, and as soon as it's done, I'll start training. In the meantime, it would be nice after yesterday's awfulness to have a ten-minute break from explaining myself."

"Okay, okay," Newt said with his hands in surrender mode. After a moment, he mumbled, "'Asshat'? Bloody hell, where do you get this stuff?"

Rose smiled a little and jutted out her chin. "Be glad you're on my good side, Newt. There's more where that came from."

"I'll try and remember that. On that note, please don't hold this against me, but Alby and I want to talk to you about what happened yesterday."

She sighed. "I'm not sure how much there is that I can really tell you. I don't know who that Ava person is or why I said—"

Newt grabbed her wrist and interrupted her thoughts. The morning light was still thin beneath the canopy and wispy tendrils of fog separated them like they were two people in two different universes staring through a veil. He felt far away and terribly close all at the same time.

"That may be what Alby wants. I just want to make sure you're okay."

"I'm fine, Newt," Rose assured, but even she wasn't sure that was true. She had a purpose today, which gave her back some of her courage, but she wasn't fine. How could she be?

The whole Glade thought she was a whore, and even Rose was beginning to think that could be true. Her insides felt divided, like a mixture slowly separating back into its different parts, and her parts had names: Thomas, Minho, Newt. They all meant something to her, but what she thought they meant was shifting, multiplying, mutating.

Fog swirled around the couple as Newt tugged Rose to his chest. She landed with an oomph against his lean sinew and bony collar. Newt always smelled like the garden, like he was of the earth not just a master of it, and the bits of mist only intensified that primordial smell. His arms wrapped around her waist as he tucked the crown of her head under his chin.

"If you're ever _not_ fine, come find me. I promise I will try to _make_ you fine."

Maybe it was the way the fog muffled his words, but his last word sounded more like "mine". For the moment, Rose didn't care. This was exactly what she had wanted last night—someone to hold her and tell her it was going to be okay, and when Newt was the one saying it, she believed him. Her hands slipped up his back and pulled him a little closer until he finally let her go, and ethereal clouds wormed between them again.

Rose had the distinct impression Newt had something more to say, but he was holding back. His eyes were so serious, maybe even wistful, but that could have been a trick of the mist. She offered him a half-smile to diffuse the weird sadness. "Thanks, Mama Newt."

"Oy, I have the most ungrateful children," he retorted, and whatever was lurking in the depths of his eyes skittered away.

The pair stopped by the Kitchen, which luckily wasn't in full swing yet, but Rose did her damnedest to ignore the few boys whispering (and some outright talking) about her. Several of them winked or whistled before Gally appeared by her side to help Newt quell the ruckus with an emphatic crack of his neck.

The Builder joined her in the buffet line and, after a moment, cleared his throat. "So, uh, I know this is a little late, but, um, about the vote the other day—"

Rose shot him a lopsided smile. "Yeah, I would have preferred if you hadn't voted to exile me to Griever hell."

His face reddened. "I didn't want to vote that way, but I was trying to be fair, and if I didn't—"

"Relax, dude, I'm just giving you a hard time. I don't hate you, Gally. I've got much bigger things to be angry about these days." The red in his face tempered to pink and then just a hint of shell as Rose spoke. "And seeing as I didn't get banished, well, after yesterday, now more than ever I need someone to watch the showers for me. Maybe that's how you can make it up to me?"

Gally didn't hesitate before he agreed. "I could give you some fighting lessons, or I could see about the Builders maybe rigging you something of your own."

"As tempting as that sounds, I don't plan on any of us being here much longer. I can't let those asshole Creators manipulate us any more than they already have."

"I don't think you should Run, Rose," Gally said suddenly. Of course he had heard the news, too, but he was surprisingly glum about it. His brows furrowed and his forehead wrinkled as he scowled. "Especially if you're going to be doing it with that lying shuck-head Thomas. He's bad news, Rose."

She glowered at the Builder. "You know, for a guy who was quick to toss me in the Maze and throw away the key, you're unnecessarily worried about me now."

Gally's blush was back. "That's different. You can handle yourself in there. Thomas will just weigh you down. He'll get you killed, that's all that slinthead knows how to do."

"You're being a little ridiculous."

But Gally shook his head firmly. "Trust me, Rose. I feel this, I know it. You weren't here for Ben, you haven't seen it. Thomas is on _their_ side. Don't ask me how I know, I just know."

Rose didn't understand Gally's deep level of hatred for Thomas, but she did remember seeing Ben's name in the Deadheads, and she could tell from the creases at the corners of Gally's eyes that he wholeheartedly believed what he was saying. Despite her very vivid memory of the Thomas Rosalind knew from Before, Gally's conviction managed to unnerve her.

"Thomas wants to get us out of here just as much as everyone else does," she replied slowly.

"Yeah, but into what, Rose? Get us into what?"

She paused again. She had that same sickening feeling in her stomach she had her first morning in the Glade, that there were things that lurked beyond the Maze walls that were even worse than the Grievers, an unimaginable fate that would leave them begging to return to the relative safety of these Walls.

"I don't know, Gally, but we can't stay here. The Creators won't let us."

The Keeper couldn't argue her point, and they fell into a dismal silence until they approached the breakfast counter.

Rose nodded a greeting to Frypan and said, "I need a plate for Minho, too, please."

Frypan raised one caterpillar eyebrow as he ladled a scoop of oatmeal into a bowl. "I thought Clint was taking over?"

Had that obstinate slinthead patient of hers held a Gathering after she'd gone to sleep? Why did the whole Glade know about this?

"Just give me the damn food, Fry," Rose demanded, and Newt stifled a smile.

After she grabbed her second plate, she heard the beefy voice of the Keeper of the Sloppers breeze behind her. "Looks like even a whore has to eat."

It wasn't loud enough for the whole cafeteria to hear, thankfully, but it was loud enough that Gally and Newt both heard it. Gally dropped his tray on a table and whirled around to find the rotund kid now squatting in his usual seat at the end of his bench. The Builder pointed one sturdy finger directly at Ender's nose and lowered his face until his eyes were level behind his warning. "You got a lot to say for a lousy Slopper. You keep talking like that to the lady, and next bonfire, you're in my ring with me, No Mercy rules."

Rose put a hand on Gally's arm. "Come on, forget it. Ender's literally the last thing on my list to care about."

And yet, as she walked past the Slopper's table, she swiped her fingers across it, knocking his tray to the floor in a tremendous clatter. Rose didn't spare a moment to look back, but she liked to imagine Ender's cheeks scarlet with rage as his lips spluttered futilely.

She headed out of the cafeteria and made for the Med-hut. To say Minho was surprised to see her would have been a gross understatement.

The Keeper of the Runners uncharacteristically slouched into his pillows as though he was trying to disappear into them. Today, he wore a dingy white shirt with a furrowed brow, and his bottom lip protruded. Even his normally styled swoop of hair was limp.

At the sight of Rose, Minho flopped like a fish as he sat up and ran both hands through his hair. "What the hell are you doing here?" he barked.

"Brought your ungrateful ass breakfast," Rose replied, depositing his tray on the table beside him.

Minho looked to her and then to the food as though he was trying to decide whether he was hungrier than he was furious with her. Good news for her was that the food won out, and Rose leaned on the counter across from the foot of his bed to better appraise him.

Minho's color looked good: his skin remained toasted and his eyes remained bag-free, which pleased her. The only things she could smell in the room, besides fried ham and oatmeal, were stale sweat and a full pot under the bed, which she gratefully accepted, as long as it wasn't rot. Aside from looking dejected, Minho looked healthy and her heart buoyed.

"You gonna tell me why you're here?" he managed between shovelfuls of runny oatmeal.

Rose crossed her arms and said, "You've sure done a good job of letting everybody know you want nothing to do with me. We made a bargain."

"And I let you out of it."

"I didn't ask you to," she replied a bit more harshly than she wanted, but then Minho excelled at pushing her every button.

He sighed and dropped his spoon. "What's with you, woman? I'm trying to give you what you want. You said you wanted to be a Runner. I gave you that. You said you want to be with Thomas. I gave you that, too, and now you act like none of that is what you wanted. You girls are so shucking confusing!"

"Try being one," she grumbled. "And anyway, in case you haven't noticed, I've always tried to earn things since I got here. I don't need everyone just handing me what I want because they think I'm some delicate flower."

"Ain't nothing delicate about you, sweetheart. You already earned it. I know you're fast, smart, and too shucking stubborn to let it go, so just go do what you want with who you want and leave me to eat this shuck ham in peace."

"No," she said flatly.

Minho lowered his bite before it hit his lips. "No?"

"No."

To underline her point, Rose walked to the left side of his bed and peeled the sheet down slowly, just in case he hadn't fully dressed. This time she was met with the hem of his underwear and—regrettably—no V. Minho started to protest, nearly spilling his oatmeal all over himself, but Rose placed one firm hand on his shoulder to hold him back as she raised his shirt just enough to uncover his bandage. Before he could fight her again, she ripped the gauze off with only a short yelp from her patient so she could inspect the wound. It was healing even better than she had hoped.

The scab was still soft and the tissue below it still pink but not terribly inflamed. Thanks to the stitches, the folds of skin sealed firmly together without the gaping opal chasm her own scar flaunted.

"Don't move," Rose ordered as she walked back to the cupboard and rifled through bottles and tubes until she found a poultice of wheat grass and honey that she had experimented with a few days ago.

She saturated some gauze with it and then layered it on top of his wound, followed by a fresh bandage. Rose tapped the edges and pulled down his shirt firmly. Minho watched her with parted lips. He had forgotten all about his ham in favor of memorizing her deft ministrations.

Rose returned to her spot at the foot of the bed and smiled proudly at him. "I want to be a Runner, Minho, but wouldn't it make more sense if we had a Med-jack who was allowed to go in the Maze to save you dumb shanks from certain death? Let me learn this so I can do that, and maybe next time we won't have to have a Gathering for the person who saves you."

It sounded reasonable. It sounded so very reasonable. It also sounded like a half-truth, and Minho could tell.

In a low, even voice, he said, "Why are you still wearing that?"

Rose looked down at her ample cleavage boosted by the snug squeeze of the crop-top and realized, despite how much she had hated the skimpy outfit, she hadn't bothered to change. Even after everything she had gone through yesterday, all the snide remarks and disparaging looks, she hadn't changed. Maybe it was because Rose would change on her terms, if and when she was good and ready, or maybe it was because it was her body and she would do what she wanted with it. But neither was the answer that came out of her mouth.

"It was part of our deal."

Minho's eyes narrowed even more as his voice dropped another octave. "What part of 'our deal is over' don't you understand? No more games, Rose. Why are you here? And don't give me this klunk about our contract again."

She ran a hand back through her curls as she tried to find an answer that made sense. Why was he giving her such a hard time about this? "Because I have to—"

Minho cut her off. "Why are you here, Rose?"

"Because I'm trying to—"

"Why are you here, Rose?"

"Because I want to be!" she shouted, startling them both.

Her cheeks flushed and she turned her head away from his stunned gaze—it was the only way she could focus enough on the words she had to say to make it right. "I want to make sure you're okay. After Cat, I don't think I could watch someone suffer like that, not if I can help it. It's eating me up."

Rose paused to rub her scar. This time, she added more softly, "And it matters what happens to you, Minho, to everyone here and to me. If I can help, I want to. So just let me help you, you professional pain-in-my-ass."

His cheek twitched, as though he wanted to smile but couldn't afford to let himself. Still, he didn't answer.

"And there's something else," she hedged. Rose wasn't sure if she was ready to bring this up, but she didn't see a way around it now that the rest of her hidden truths were tumbling out. "I had a dream about you last night, a memory of us together in the Maze."

At this confession, Minho leaned forward, his brow creasing as he fought through the pain of his stitches tightening, but he was determined. Rose had never seen him so interested or even so serious. His voice was slow and deliberate as he punctuated each word. "Which one?"

Rose paused as she tried to interpret the unprecedented eagerness in his tone. For some reason, her heartbeat quickened. "We were racing. I was on a wall, you were down below. I smiled at you, and after a couple minutes, you took off in another direction." She caught his steady gaze and tried to embolden herself before she added. "You called me 'beautiful.'"

"Oh," he said quietly as he sat back.

What had Minho expected her to remember? Wasn't that enough?

"I'm not crazy, right? That happened?"

"Yeah, that happened. But my recollection was you were the one who called me 'beautiful.'" Minho tried to recover some of his cool sarcasm, but he sounded so… disappointed—no other word for it.

Irritation crept under Rose's collar, but she refused to give in to it. No need to get started off on the wrong foot again. Instead, she stuffed her sigh back down and said, as calmly as she could manage, "My point is: if I can remember that, maybe I can remember how I used to get in and out of the Maze. I could get us all out."

"Would be nice," Minho mused, but it didn't even sound like he was listening to her.

Just then, Jeff's warm brown face burst through the door that led into the rest of the Homestead. He blinked as he glanced between the two of them, and finally, to Rose, he said, "Oh, you're back."

She offered a tight smiled and said, "Yeah, obviously somebody forgot to give our patient his medicine because he was talking klunk all last night."

Jeff pursed his lips. "Guess that explains why he's been pouty all night."

"I have not been pouty," Minho retorted and crossed his arms over his chest.

Jeff and Rose shared a smile before the other Med-jack said to her, "So, you got things covered here?"

"Sure do."

"How ya feelin', man?" Jeff asked, but Minho didn't answer.

"He's relieved to have me back," Rose teased, but her patient still didn't respond.

She furrowed her brow. Sure, Minho had always been prone to giving her the silent treatment, but this was different; it was like he wasn't even on the same planet as she was, let alone in the same room.

Jeff scowled as well and hesitated to leave until Rose added, "He's fine. Everything looks good. If you see Clint, you can tell him I just changed his bandage. Stitches look great, by the way."

The other Med-jack nodded, and with one last concerned look for Minho, he closed the door, leaving Rose submerged in the silence.

Figuring it was better to let the man stew in his own juices for a bit, Rose went to work choosing various medicinal recipes from the antique books in the cabinets. By the time she had gathered three she knew they had the supplies to make, the Runner shifted on the bed and brought her attention back to him.

Minho was staring at her, like he was trying to puzzle her out. She had no idea for how long.

"You wanted to know about the first time I saw you in the Maze," he began without ceremony.

Rose dropped what she was doing and swiveled around in her chair. "Yes."

He ran another hand through his hair, brushing an uncharacteristic drooping lock from his brow, and closed his eyes. "I heard you before I ever saw you. Always singing the same shuck song you hum now, in different Sections, too. Six times in three weeks. You were everywhere I was, just me, and you'd only appear when I was alone. I'd follow the sound of your voice and never catch sight of you. The other shanks thought I was jacked in the head. Shuck, so did I.

"Then one windy shuckin' day, I was running Section 3, about ten minutes out from the Blades. There was a gray sky above, and you were in a red dress, standing with your back to me on top of one of the walls."

Rose tried to revive the memory Minho described. The only thing she could picture clearly was the red dress. It was the color of fresh cherries, with sleeves that came to her elbows and a deep neckline with a notch at the breast to highlight her décolletage. Dripping down from the notch was a row of decorative fabric buttons that ended at a banded waist, and a flowy skirt fluttered down from there just above her knees. Rose recalled it in perfect detail from last night. If she had any lingering doubts that her dreams were just dreams and not memories, they evaporated as Minho's story unfolded.

His eyes opened and pierced her. "And then you turned around and saw me, looked me dead in the eyes, and whistled the last bar of your song with these damn painted red lips."

"Sounds more like a fantasy of yours," Rose teased lightly.

Minho sighed, his head falling back onto the pillow again. "Then you just vanished. Took off fast as hell, and I didn't see you again for almost a month. By that point, I thought I had made it all up. Hell, every other shuck-head here convinced me I was full of klunk, 'specially Admiral Alby. He even tried to make me see Clint for tests, not that that shuck-face would know the first thing about it."

Rose tried to picture a version of herself who would intentionally torture another person, and while she didn't want to believe that she could ever do something like that, she already knew from her dream that she had. She had been directed to torment him no less, evidently for weeks. What else had she done and to whom? If there was a version of herself who could act with such callousness, maybe she didn't want to know her. In fact, Rose wished Minho didn't even have these memories. No wonder he resented her so much.

But curiosity always seemed to get the better of her, and she pressed on. "Why did you call me your Shadow?"

"That's what these slintheads used to say, 'There goes Minho, trying to catch his Shadow again.' You were everywhere I was. At first, you'd be running up above me, but then sometimes you'd be right ahead of me, just out of reach, and disappear a second later. Other times, you'd come up behind me and dart away before I could catch you. You had these really light feet, some kind of shoe that made the softest sound, and I wouldn't hear you until it was too late. And you always had your escape route planned out, knew the Maze better than I ever have. Nobody else ever saw you. Only me."

Rose was dazzled by his memories of Rosalind. Minho seemed to have committed their every interaction to memory as easily as he had every other quirk in the Maze. He couldn't have forgotten he called her beautiful. Had he meant it, too?

"Did we ever talk?" she asked.

Minho shook his head. "The only time I ever heard your voice is when you were singing for me."

"Conceited much?"

"Hey, you were the one who dreamed I called you beautiful," he volleyed back, and Rose was relieved his spark had finally reignited.

She stuck out her tongue and said, "So if all I did was sing and race you, why do you keep calling me dangerous?"

Whatever light had flickered back in the depths of Minho's mocha eyes extinguished immediately. "That's not important now, is it? I'm letting you go back in anyway."

"It's not important? You've been telling everyone who'd listen that I'm not to be trusted. Just because I know the Maze?"

"And worked for the Creators, Doctor Shuckette, don't forget that."

"I don't buy it. There's more you're not telling me."

"Maybe there is, but I guess you'll just have to remember that on your own." There was that flash of disappointment again, but this time she caught something else—something colder, damper.

Rose sneered at him. "Slinthead."

The two of them shared another long silence that Rose welcomed this time. She had so much more to think about now that she knew the kind of person she had been—maybe the type she really was. If everything that Minho said was true, she was lucky the rest of the Glade had never seen her in the Maze or they might never have bothered to revive her.

One thing niggled at Rose more than anything else: Directive 1.4. Why would someone have ordered her to smile at anybody? The fact that it was numbered, too, implied there were other instructions Rosalind had completed. Rose suspected some of the things she had done to Minho were other directives, though she had no way of knowing what they were or why anyone would have asked her to do such asinine things. Singing? Running? Smiling? What the hell was the point of any of it, especially when they were just going to toss her into the Glade after she completed them? Who the hell were these Creators?

"Hey, Doc, I need to use the bathroom," Minho said, finally yanking Rose from her own circular thoughts. She dog-eared her page and stood to leave the room so he could use the pot, but Minho was stubborn as always. "I'd rather walk."

"You've lost your walking privileges," she replied with a vicious grin at the memory of their first meeting in the Glade.

"Ha ha," he replied. "Seriously, I'm going insane. You have any idea how shuckin' hard it is for a guy who runs all day to lay in bed for hours on end? I feel itchy all over. It's hard to sleep with all this restless energy. You gotta let me do something."

"I don't want you to reopen your wound."

"I'll use you as my crutch. You can control how fast we go. Deal?" His eyes were pleading.

"I thought you weren't into deals anymore?"

"Woman, I'm dying here."

Rose thought about adding one extra stipulation that he ditch the shirt, but Minho would have enjoyed that probably more than she would, so she acquiesced. "Fine, but you cannot let go of me until we get there, and you try to take off anywhere else or even _think_ about running, and I'll pour more of my special concoction right back into your reopened wound."

Minho winced at the memory of the fizzing antiseptic and nodded in agreement.

Rose helped Minho sit up and sweep his legs over the edge of the bed. The band of his underwear rested just below the top of his hip bones and only served as a biting reminder of what Rose knew lurked beneath.

"Jeez, you couldn't have bothered to put on pants?" she grumbled as she sidled up alongside him, their legs touching.

Rose caught a glimpse of a smirk out of the corner of her eyes, which were now fixated on the smooth hills of Minho's muscular thighs. "Didn't seem to bother you yesterday when you were taking advantage of me."

"That's called doctoring, you silly shank."

"So that's what the kids are calling it these days," Minho teased before a grimace overtook his face. Though he had managed admirably to bite back whatever other pain he was feeling, as soon as Rose placed his left arm over her shoulder and her right arm under his shoulder blades, his body tensed.

"We go up on three. One, two, three." Together, they stood with Minho leaning heavily into Rose. "Good. How are you feeling?"

"Fine."

"Liar." She nodded toward the door, and he took one sloppy step forward, jerking her along with him. "Nice and easy. Don't push yourself."

They hobbled along the perimeter of the Homestead, rather than risking the obstacles going through it, and with Rose firmly steering them the entire way, they reached the bathrooms without incident, though at least a dozen boys swooped in to chat. She could tell from the others' desperation that no one had forgotten Cat's fate. Seeing Minho walking so soon relieved them because the cold, hard truth was that the Keeper of the Runners was the strongest of all of them, and if he could go down, what chance did they stand?

When Minho finally reemerged, he looked a little taxed from the exertion despite all his boasts and protests, and Rose immediately secured him to her, though this time his left arm had other plans. He slipped it around Rose's bare expanse of waist, mimicking the languid journey his fingers had taken yesterday before she snapped, "You looking to add finger amputation to your list of medical procedures?"

Minho chuckled, but Rose would be lying if she didn't admit to herself how quickly the flirty gesture had heated her body—which was absolutely, unequivocally, unquestionably the reason she had to stop it immediately, especially since she remembered that a similar touch from Thomas had ended with midnight moans of his name.

Rose wasn't stupid, and she had just enough wretched introspection to realize that if that fucking Box of mayhem hadn't been delivered, she might have listened to her body instead of her head and made a very foolhardy mistake. But as long as Minho didn't ever know that, given enough time (and distance from the man), Rose could probably will herself to forget it. So, it was in her best interest to heal the problem child as quickly as humanly possible.

To distract his fingers as much as her own perilous thoughts, Rose said, "Do you remember anything from your past life?"

"Nah," Minho answered. "Thomas is the only one of us shanks who has anything close to a memory of the last world we lived in, and I still think that shuck-head's dreaming and don't know it. Sometimes I think I remember something like a favorite color or food, but then I think it's probably just this me. No way to know if it was the old me, too."

It struck Rose as particularly tragic that the boys were deprived of even the simplest pieces of themselves. Where she had been lucky enough to discover a way to carve out those precious diamond chips of herself—enough to know her favorite color was orange and her favorite food was potato soup—Minho and the others had to reinvent themselves along the way. They had no yard stick by which to measure themselves anymore. Were they becoming good men or selfish monsters, heroes or villains?

"What's your favorite color now?" Rose asked.

"Red," he replied without hesitation, and her eyes snapped to his cool jaw and sneaky sidelong glance.

More cautiously, she said, "Favorite food?"

This time his tongue poked the inside of his cheek before he answered, "Tomatoes with extra dirt."

Rose scowled at him, but they shared a laugh. "I'll bet you're glad I didn't end up a Cook."

"You almost did," he confessed. "I had to talk those shanks out of it. I couldn't take any more meals with Rose's special seasoning."

"You deserved that, you know?"

Minho tsk-ed. "I _was_ trying to help you."

"Whatever. You were trying to help yourself," she argued.

On cue, the Runner stroked that tender patch on Rose's hip again, and she sucked in a sharp breath. Minho made no attempts to stifle his delight, and he leaned a little closer so he could whisper next to her ear. "You mean like that?"

Rose was never so grateful to see the Med-hut, and as soon as they were back inside, she deposited her patient back onto the bed with a long protesting moan from him. For her part, Rose was thankful to have the cool air buffet the blistering swath Minho's hand had cut along her lower back. She would have to be more guarded against the Runner's antics if these were the side-effects she would continue to suffer at his touch.

As quickly as she could, Rose inspected the wound under his bandage to find it had not reopened before she retreated to the furthest corner of the room. From the safety of her new vantage, Rose could see the exhaustion Minho had mentioned from his restlessness.

"I should let you get some sleep," she said as she gathered her recipe book, but Minho shook his head.

"I'm tired, but I can't sleep."

"Minho, you need to," Rose insisted. "It's probably the most important part of your recovery. Just close your eyes and relax."

"That's the problem. I can't relax. I don't remember the last time I could. The only reason I can fall asleep any night here is because I'm so shuckin' tired from running." Minho's eyes creased at the bridge of his nose and his jaw tightened.

Then an idea popped into Rose's head. "I'll be right back."

In a few minutes, she was back with her fiddle. Minho looked at her with curiosity as she found her seat and anxiously stroked the neck of her instrument. This felt different than her first performance at the bonfire. For some reason, Rose couldn't shake the stranglehold of embarrassment that itched around her scar as she prepared to put herself on showcase for her patient.

She cleared her throat and proclaimed, "If you promise to close your eyes and try to sleep, I'll play you something. No guarantees on what comes out of these fingers though."

After a moment of consideration, Minho nodded.

Rose perched the fiddle under her chin and began to play, music spilling from her fingertips as they coaxed forth yet another melody she didn't recognize and yet somehow remembered. Instead of another jaunty reel like she had played at the bonfire, a plaintive tale issued from the strings as clearly as if someone were actually telling it. At times warbling and aching, eventually the notes soared like a cry to the heavens. At the conclusion of the first verse, a single tear spilled over Rose's cheek, but she could not pause to wipe it away, and honestly, it would do a disservice to the composition to conceal the feelings it evoked.

Her eyes flicked up to Minho, who was carefully studying her. She frowned at him. "I told you, you have to close your eyes."

"I don't want to."

His voice was steady and firm and very, very earnest, and Rose's throat went dry.

It was different playing for a private audience, especially one as astute as the Keeper of the Runners. Rose felt more exposed, like she was under a spotlight that illuminated her every fault. Even if he knew nothing of the fiddle, the more he stared at her, the more she felt every tremble of her fingers, every stroke of her bow, was flawed.

"Close your eyes and relax," Rose instructed, "or I'll stop playing and just leave for lunch. You take a nap, and I promise when you wake up, I'll have something for you to eat. Until then, listen to me for once in your shuck life."

"Then come over here so I can hear you better," he replied with a half-smile, patting the mattress.

Rose was dubious of his motives, but if it meant Minho would finally go to sleep, she was willing to give in for once. She circled around the bed, taking a seat at the edge of the mattress right beside his injured hip. The arrangement actually worked better for her because she couldn't see his scrutinizing gaze anymore. She tucked the chin guard under her neck and leaned into her instrument.

A second verse of the song poured over them both, and Rose hazarded a glance up at her patient. Minho had at last acquiesced in the face of her threat and closed his eyes, but his fingers were not so willing to relent. Their tips pendulously grazed the hem of her leggings for a few more bars before they fell away. By the time Rose had finished the final verse and her bow had stilled on the strings, the only thing left to fill the room was the delicate rhythm of Minho's shallow breaths.

Rose rested her fiddle on her lap. She glanced back at her patient's sleeping face and had to remark to herself how charming he looked with his lips pressed together in a rouged bow and that willful blade of hair clinging to his forehead. She was tempted to brush it back for him, but if there was one thing she knew, it was that no one touched Minho's hair.

Instead, Rose gathered her things to head for the Kitchen when she discovered a crowd of faces filling the Med-hut window, drawn by the sounds of music. There were a half-dozen Builders and Bricknicks, and one stern face under a ruffled blonde crown.

* * *

 _A/N: Please do yourself a favor and listen to "She Moved Through the Fair" by Dearbhla Nolan on Youtube. This is what I picture Rose playing for Minho._


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter Eighteen**

 _Taeyang – Wake Me Up_

 _A/N: Another favorite chapter here. ;)_

* * *

Rose closed the door to the Med-hut and quietly shooed away her gawkers until she was left with only the sullen Second-in-Command. Newt's normally genial face was anchored down at the edges with some unidentifiable emotion that Rose immediately hated seeing on him; it didn't belong where his warmth and kindness and wit always did. She smiled at him in hopes to dispel it, but it persisted.

"Sorry for intruding. I thought you were practicing. I didn't realize you were playing just for Minho." His words sounded strange to her, bitterer than she had ever expected from him.

"It's okay. Just trying to help him relax."

Newt looked back at the bed, to the dent at the edge Rose had just occupied. "Looks like it worked."

"I hope so. When he sleeps, he can't harass me."

Newt's normal smile was nowhere to be found. "Do you mind if I steal you for a bit? Alby'd like the three of us to talk."

"Just let me get someone to grab lunch for Minho before we go."

She thought she heard Newt sigh, but it could have been the Homestead settling under the unforgiving midday sun. Rose grabbed Chuck as he passed and arranged for him to deliver food to her patient before she followed Newt to her hut. It was quiet back in her wooded enclave, not even a bird chirp to break it up.

"Where's Alby?" she asked as she set her fiddle down.

"He should be here soon."

Rose cocked her head as she studied her friend: his stiff neck, avoidant eyes, balled fists. "What's wrong, Newt?"

"Nothing. Just a weird buggin' day. I'll be glad when it's over," he answered tersely.

His sour mood only deepened as his eyes fell to the wrinkled hammock on the floor and the pill boxes strewn about the room. He stooped down and picked up one of the boxes closest to his feet. As he flipped it over, he said, "Why do you think the Creators sent these to you?"

She scowled. "I thought that answer was obvious: they're a bunch of douchebags."

"I thought you'd have burned them by now."

Rose felt a hidden accusation there but said nothing. Newt was right. As much as she resented the pills, as humiliated as she was by them, she had not gotten rid of them. She tried to tell herself that she had been too tired, too sad yesterday to do it, but if Newt proposed a bonfire right now, if she were honest—really honest with herself right now—she didn't think she could throw them in. The implications of her choice surprised and disgusted her, and yet, even that did not compel her to destroy the pills.

Newt nodded once slowly as though he were listening to her thoughts. "They want something from you, Rose. Don't give it to them."

"I don't even know what it is!" she shouted.

But he shouted right back at her. "I thought _that_ would be bloody obvious by now!"

Rose's voice darkened. "Are we still talking about the Creators?"

Newt took a step closer to her, and the pill box dropped from his hands. "Listen, I trust Tommy with my life."

Another step closer, his limp more prevalent under the heaviness in his voice.

"But I don't trust him with you."

They were close enough now that if he wanted to, he could reach out and grab her. Kiss her.

"Newt..."

Was it a warning or an invitation? Rose couldn't tell.

His name dripping from her lips was all he needed to close the remaining gap between them. One hand encircled her waist and the other rested at the curve of her neck before Alby unceremoniously opened the door. Rose's eyes were wide while Newt's remained indifferent.

"Everything all right in here?" Alby said, his dark eyes darker than usual as he assessed Newt's hands on Rose's skin.

"Fine," his Second-in-Command answered. Newt added a shrug and lazily removed his hands as though this was all terribly ordinary for them.

Rose didn't move a muscle.

Alby returned his narrow gaze to her as he said, "We need to talk about yesterday, and before ya get in my face, I ain't tryin' to police your life. It ain't about that at all."

But if another version of Rose would have thought to argue, this one was far too stunned at what had almost happened with Newt to make a sound.

"Who's Ava?" Alby continued when she didn't respond.

"I—" The letter came out more like a squeak than a word. "I really don't know. I just said it. If I had to guess, I'd say she probably works for the Creators."

Alby pressed his lips together. "You rememberin' things from your past life?"

Rose's eyes slipped between the two leaders, from Alby's suspicious glare to Newt's unreadable mask. "Well, yeah, I thought you knew? Most of it's just dumb stuff, things I like to eat or toys I had as a kid. I remember my mother, sort of, just pieces really, and a song. I remembered I played the fiddle, which is why Newt got that for me."

"Newt knew about your memories?" Alby swiveled sharply to face his friend and gave the perfect 'What the hell, man?' look. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Newt shrugged again, practically offering a clinic on unflappable chill. "They're Rose's memories. They weren't mine to share. Besides, none of them were about how we got here. They're personal."

"She shared them with you." Alby's words had a bite to them.

Newt half-smiled. "Yes, she did."

Rose exhaled loudly, knowing what she was about to confess was going to change everything again. She closed her eyes as though it would help protect her from the inevitable backlash. "There's more I haven't told either of you, but with all the other shit that's been going on, I can't keep it to myself anymore. Thomas and I were… together… before we got here."

"'Together?' So that was the kiss you remembered?"

It was so much worse only focusing on the unnatural stress in Newt's voice. Rose pried open one eye and found both men staring, Alby pointedly at her and Newt blankly into the distance.

"It's just a guess, really," she hedged, "based off of one stupid piece of a memory. And Thomas doesn't remember anything about it. It could have been nothing, but…" Rose trailed off, knowing anything more she could add would be an outright lie. What Thomas and she had shared in her memory was no spur-of-the-moment one-night stand between two strangers, but explaining that to the two men would only be adding insult to injury.

"But that's not really what's important," she added quickly. "Last night, I remembered something huge. I remembered one of the times I was in the Maze before they sent me up."

Though both men were bothered by her initial news, they were completely dumbfounded by the rest. "I was running on top of one of the walls in the Maze, and Minho was down below. He kind of challenged me to a race before he left me in the lurch on the wall."

"That does sound like that slinthead," Alby said with a concurring cock of his head. "Anything else?"

"Yeah, I had an objective I was supposed to complete. Something called Directive 1.4."

"Do you remember what it was?" Alby pushed.

Rose nodded. "I was supposed to smile at him."

"Smile?" Newt said with disbelief.

"At Minho?" Alby echoed.

Rose nodded again.

"Who would want to go and have you do a dumb-shuck thing like that?" Newt said, the smallest hint of his usual self creeping back in.

"I can only remember the directive, not who gave it. But I get the sinking feeling that I might have worked for the Creators at some point, too."

As disgusted as she was to admit that, Rose felt it was the only explanation for her memory. She looked to the two boys, and where Alby's cautious eyes were back in full effect, Newt's were more worried. She added urgently, "But maybe that can work for us. Maybe it can get us out of here. I might be able to find how I got in and out of the Maze whenever I needed to."

"A way out," Alby mused.

"I thought you didn't want to leave," Newt said.

Rose had not forgotten her outburst her first morning in the Glade—far from it. It was the first time she could ever remember crying, and somehow those tears still felt tacky on her cheeks. The tremors of terror at the thought of the other world still vibrated in her limbs, reminding her, like an almost-palpable thrum of electricity through a fence, that danger lurked beyond. The Creators had thought they were making Rose new and clean, but instead they had made her a living, breathing palimpsest.

"I think that's the old me still in here somewhere," she replied. "Rosalind knows something she doesn't want to give up, and honestly, when I think about it, I don't want her to give it up either. Besides, it doesn't change anything. Time is short, and our list of options is even shorter."

"Rosalind?" Newt repeated.

Rose shrugged one shoulder. "I guess I went by my full name in my past life."

Alby shook his head. "But if we follow you, Rose, won't that just lead us right to the people who put us in here in the first place?"

"Maybe," Rose said, "but maybe it's supposed to. If the Creators didn't want us to eventually find them, they wouldn't connect the Maze to their facility—assuming they are connected. But if they are, then I can finally tell them to their faces to fuck themselves. Whatever they expected to get out of this, it wasn't worth it."

Alby paced the length of her room, his dusty boots carving a new track down its center. He made a half-dozen sighs, grunts, and groans and ran his hand over his bristly crop. Finally, his boots halted in front of Rose, scattering chalky pebbles across her shins. "You should get back in the Maze as soon as possible. Start tomorrow."

"What? No. I can't," she said quickly.

"Why not? Thomas can train you. We already know you get along with him better than Minho."

"Tommy's too green for that," Newt argued with a decisive chop of his hand through the air. "What about Renny or Jonas or even Omar? They've been Running since the beginning."

Alby glowered at his Second-in-Command. "Just because you don't want—"

"It's not about that," Newt and Rose interjected at the same time. The blonde looked relieved she was about to steer the conversation somewhere else, and he waved her first.

Rose lowered her gaze to her dusty leggings. "Minho knows where Rosalind has been in the Maze. Maybe if he takes me back there, something will jar loose, some memory of where I'd go afterwards or what was on the other side. Nobody but Minho knows that."

Alby considered her words and then nodded. "Okay, makes sense. Soon as that shank's back on his feet, Minho'll take you in there. Might be a good exercise in patience for the slinthead anyway."

Rose beamed in relief. She glanced at Newt, who was trying to hide his own smile.

Alby headed for the door, and before he left, he stopped to scrutinize the two of them one last time before his eyes roved over Rose's room. "Ya know, for a girl who worked as a Slopper for weeks, you pretty damn klunk at cleaning. Straighten up this mess."

"Sure, Dad," she replied.

He paused at her door before he added, "Your hammock broken?"

Rose's eyes darted to the fallen fabric and then to Newt, and her chest constricted. "Nah—no. It's just more comfortable."

Their leader hummed suspiciously but walked out, leaving her door wide open. Perhaps he expected Newt to follow, but the blonde waited behind in the raggedy golden light.

The couple stood in silence again, and as seconds ticked by, Rose began to wonder if Newt was going to pick up where he'd left off before Alby's intrusion. Every time Rose thought she had this place and the people in it figured out, something came along to remind her she knew precisely nothing about anything.

Another long moment passed.

"You keep surprising me, Rose. Yesterday you looked like you were ready to give up on the whole world, and today you're more determined than I've ever seen you. I don't know what to bloody make of you."

"That makes two of us," she grumbled.

Newt took a couple steps backward until his spine collided with the wall, and he sagged downward, tugging his good leg under him and leaving his injured one jutting out. His head drooped and his shoulders slumped. "Do you think everyone our age feels like this?" he said.

"Like what?"

"Tired. Confused. Overwhelmed. Like bloody klunk." He released a long breath and ran a hand back through his tousled locks. "Do you think any of them feel this alone?"

"Newt…" Rose sat down across from him, mirroring his body language so that their outstretched legs completed a neat rectangle. She reached her hand out to his ankle and squeezed lightly. "You're not alone. I'm always here for you."

His eyes looped up from her reassuring grasp to the pill boxes and the hammock again. He said nothing further, but somehow that stung much worse than if he had.

After a moment, Rose said, "I can live with everybody else being disappointed in me, but not you, Newt."

"Shuck," he said, his eyes returning to her face, "I'm not disappointed in you. I'm disappointed that we lost our thing."

"Our what?"

"Our thing. Every morning, you'd tell me about your dreams—just me—and it's been my favorite part of every day. Sometimes it's the only thing that gets me through. I felt like I knew you better than anyone."

His eyes were so warm and sincere that Rose felt herself melting into them.

"You're my best friend, Newt. You _do_ know me better than anyone." She squeezed his ankle tighter, willing him to believe her.

But he made one more poignant glance to her wrinkled hammock, and her stomach turned.

"It was selfish," he continued, "but that part of you was mine, and now, I have to share that with everyone else, too."

 _Mine?_

"What was that you played for Minho?" he asked suddenly.

Rose glanced back to her fiddle. "I have no idea. Like everything I play, it just comes out."

"Did he like it?"

"I can't ever tell what he likes. He's harder to figure out than his stupid Maze."

And then, like those first morning rays of apricot blazing over the Walls, it dawned on Rose why Newt was asking. The fiddle was yet another thing they had shared that was doled out for others. He had requested it for her, danced to it with her, as though it had been only the two of them at that bonfire. She had kissed him while playing it. And now he had just seen her playing it for one of his best friends as though none of that had ever happened. Rose had been so wrapped up in her own problems and in trying to solve them that she hadn't even considered Newt. She swore to herself.

Rose scrambled up from her seat and grabbed her fiddle—their fiddle—then returned to sit across from him. "Let me play something for you. Keep in mind, it's probably something I've heard before, but since I can't know for sure, I'm going to pretend I wrote it myself. For you. I'll call it 'My Bloody Newt.'"

He smiled at her terrible accent and his body straightened, his familiar charm inspiring her fingers. Rose returned his grin as she leaned her chin into the cold cup of the chin rest and closed her eyes. She pictured long blonde hair, wind-rustled bangs, brown eyes mellowed at their edges with heavy wisdom for one so young, sinew and secrets and bravery. She beckoned the notes locked behind her gray wall, and to her surprise, they came.

The first several bars were doleful, melancholy in both timbre and pitch, and with them came an image of Newt standing in a meadow at the lip of a cliff, gazing off at the horizon as long blades of grass buckled at his knees. Gray skies chilled his back but evening sun warmed his face. Stiff, unrelenting gales buffeted him, but he stood tall in spite of it, accepting of some uncharted sorrow Rose couldn't fathom.

But suddenly, she pictured him looking into the sun—looking into her—with his keen gaze, that affectionate smile playing at his lips, and her bow sailed up and sawed down sweetly, coaxing forth a hopeful end from the forlorn beginning.

The notes reached out like a reassuring hand to caress a weary cheek, and Newt seemed to lean into them. His song was a balance of joy and regret, strength and vulnerability. Wistful highs tempered with a few steep lows. Just like her bloody Newt.

When the horsehair had drawn the last note, Rose opened her eyes and found Newt with a ghost of a smile on his face.

"Did you like it?" she asked hesitantly.

"I did."

"I'll only ever play that for you, okay? Never anyone else."

"Okay."

Then he tucked his injured leg up beside him so he could lean forward and press his lips to hers. It was sweet and chaste and grateful. His nose bumped hers as his lips lingered as long as they could, as though they sensed this would be the only time he could ever kiss her.

When he finally pulled back, Newt said, "Thank you."

"You're—" she stuttered, blinking hard, "you're welcome."

"So, are you coming to lunch or what, you lazy shank?" he asked as he stood up and brushed off the butt of his pants.

Rose sat there bewildered as she still felt the tender press of his lips, but when she looked up at Newt's wide, goofy grin, she found that whatever had plagued him earlier had vanished as though it had never been there.

"I'm beginning to think you're just as disturbed as Minho is," she groused as she also stood.

"Bloody hell, Rose, I thought we were friends. Why would you say something so hurtful?"

"Shuck-face," she added as she followed Newt to the Kitchen.

After lunch, Rose returned to the Med-hut to find a very grouchy but much less exhausted Minho. Without preamble, he barked, "Hey, what's the big idea sending Runtcheeks in with my lunch? I thought you were bringing it?"

Rose smiled as she spread out her supplies for his next wound treatment. "Aw, did you miss me?"

"Shuck no. It just irritates me when someone takes an oath they're going to look after their patient and then disappears."

"Mm-hm. It sounds like you missed me." Minho huffed noisily and crossed his arms over his bare chest. Rose squinted at him. "What happened to your shirt?"

"I'm too hot for a shirt," he replied.

"Mm-hm," she repeated, but she realized that the sound came out more lascivious than she had wanted.

Minho noticed—he always noticed—and flexed his arms behind his head so she could get a better look. Rose couldn't tell, but knowing his ego, she expected he might be naked again underneath that sheet. She braced for it as she checked his bandage, but she found the band of his underwear and her body betrayed her yet again with a quiet hum of a disappointment.

"Looking for something?" he teased.

"Yeah, another job," she retorted. "Speaking of, I met with Alby and Newt while you were out. Once you're better, they want me Running with you. I thought you could take me back to some of the places I've been so I can remember more."

He raised an eyebrow. "You don't want to Run with Thomas?"

"Well, I—I mean, you are the Keeper, and you remember the other me, so it just makes more sense."

"That's not really an answer," Minho said with a smirk.

"Forget it. You made a deal with me that you'd let me in the Maze, and now you're stuck with me. Don't try and get out of it."

"Mm-hm," he echoed and Rose growled.

But now that everything was settled between them, Rose and Minho settled into a groove. Over the next ten days, Rose alternated between treating Minho, bickering with him, and even forging some kind of bizarre friendship, even if neither of them would admit that last part to each other. Rose would wake up and head straight work, stopping only to get food for them and report her memories to Alby and Newt—though her latest ones had been decidedly bland, all things considered.

Sometimes Thomas would tag along for those meetings, too, as he'd been having flashes of memories as well, though his dreams were even more fragmented than Rose's own. From his descriptions, it sounded like he might also have worked for the Creators, but it was unclear doing what, and Rose couldn't shake the suspicion that he remembered more than he was letting on.

Meal times became very busy in the Med-hut. After only one day of Rose spending every meal with Minho—mainly because he would throw a toddler tantrum if she left him alone for too long—the other boys from their usual table pulled up stakes and began to eat in the hospital room with them. Even Alby forsook his eagle-eye view of the rest of Gladers to spend his time with the group that Chuck affectionately referred to as the Wolfpack. Clint and Jeff were often there, some meals Gally would tag along with Eli and one or two other Builders, and occasionally even Anil and his Baggers would appear. At those meals, there would be so many of them, they would spill outside and have to eat with the door open.

"We might as well eat in the Kitchen if everyone's going to show up here every shucking day," Minho grumbled.

By his fifth day of recovery, the Keeper of the Runners could manage the short walk to the bathrooms easily, though he insisted Rose accompany him, and he often saddled her with his extra weight if for no other reason than to torture her. To get him off her back—literally—she forced him to eat in the cafeteria from that point forward, and afterwards, they began taking longer walks around the Glade.

To her surprise, Rose discovered their walks were her favorite part of every day. After two years here, Minho had a story for almost everything, practically down to the blades of grass themselves, and with his sharp memory, he spared no detail as he regaled her with tales of brawls and pranks, deaths and heroism. Those were Rose's favorite. For some reason, in those stories, she pictured the boys as pirates or Vikings or even knights, and she would laugh and Minho would smile too, even if he didn't understand what was sending her into fits of giggles.

"You're one weird chick," he would often say with a half-grin.

As for Minho's recovery, Rose had done her best to change his dressings often and, luckily, the wound never reopened. It had knit shut in a soft pink seam that, with time, Rose was confident would heal without much of a scar, though by now, Rose could confidently admit to herself that even if the man sported a scar as garish as her own, it could not take away from the rest of his unreasonably handsome features.

By day eight, Rose could sense the end of their deal coming. To transition Minho back into his daily life, she sent him out on a few short sprints at first, and then the next day on longer ones. By day ten, Minho could keep up at a steady jog with her around the Glade. Though he had lost a bit of his stamina in his convalescence, Rose knew he would have it back after just a few days in the Maze. Besides, it would work to her advantage if he wasn't at full power when she first entered.

That night, as Minho collapsed against the West Wall not far from her room, hunched over in a winded mess of shuddering ribs and ragged exhales, she leaned beside him. "Only an hour's run and you're this tired? Think you still got what it takes, old man?"

His head craned up so he could scowl more firmly at her. "Woman, you're hell on a shank's confidence, you know that?"

"I'm teasing you," she said, nudging his billowing side. "I'm clearing you to go back in the Maze, Mr. Minho. And you should sleep in your own room tonight. Don't know why you haven't gone back to it already."

Minho didn't say anything, and Rose instead had to listen to the sound of his stiff breaths steadying.

"You okay with that?" she asked.

He rested his head against the concrete. "Course I am. It's all I know. You sure you wanna go on this fool's errand with me? There's still time to change your mind."

"Not a chance," Rose replied. "It's your turn to take care of some dead weight for a few days."

"Your job ain't done yet, Doctor Shuckette. You know you're still going to have to do follow-ups, maybe even a physical or two," Minho ribbed as he ran his tongue over his top set of teeth.

Rose rolled her eyes. "Well, you can kiss the sexy nurse uniform goodbye because, after tonight, I'm giving it Winston to thoroughly shred. Not practical in the Maze anyway."

"Shame," he said as he pushed off the Wall and placed a hand on her bare abdomen. With a gentle push, his splayed fingers sailed across the wide plain of her skin, his thumb stopping just long enough to trace the circumference of her bellybutton. Rose felt a tingle, not throughout her body like Thomas' touches had always done, but in one very, very specific place.

"I'll miss teasing you like this."

Minho's face was close and his hot, stuttering breaths blazed a trail across her skin, but his whisper was so quiet, she almost didn't hear it. Rose glanced up at him but found his gaze fixated firmly on his hand's sensual torture.

"I'm sure you'll think of lots of new ways," Rose said, prying his hand away one finger at a time. She regretted it instantly, not just because her stomach felt frigid from his skin's absence, but, even worse, they were now holding hands.

That devilish glint in Minho's eyes didn't disappoint. He interlaced his fingers with hers and squeezed. "You're right, what am I worrying about? We have so much left to explore together."

"You're impossible. I hate you," she spat and dramatically shook his hand from hers as though she were covered in spiders.

"It's easy to get rid of me. You could just forget about the Maze, stay back in the Glade, let us Runners do the heavy lifting."

So, he'd resorted to commandeering her tricks…

Rose squinted at him. "Fat chance, slinthead. The sooner I find the way out, the faster I get rid of you for good."

Minho pouted his bottom lip but took a few backward steps toward the Homestead. "Okay, but don't say I didn't warn you. See you at breakfast, Doc."

He jogged away, leaving Rose frustrated, anxious, and itchy. She needed Thomas.

She waited for him in her room. Thomas had given up entirely on sleeping in the Homestead and had instead spent every night with her. Most nights he tried to keep his hands to himself, but other times Rose wouldn't let him. When she was restless or confused, it was easier to focus with his hands on her. She needed those hands now more than ever.

Normally, Thomas was happy to oblige her foreplay requests, but tonight, as she fingered the button on his pants, he stayed her wrists. "Can we talk about tomorrow please?"

"Ugh, that is literally the last thing I want to do right now," she whined.

But Thomas' eyes were forthright and unrelenting. "Rose, you're headed into the most dangerous place in the Glade, and you won't even let me be there with you. I need to make sure you're okay."

"I'd be more okay with your fingers inside me," she said, pressing herself against him.

Thomas groaned and shuddered, but the man had an iron will tonight and wouldn't relent, and if Rose wanted any sort of release, she figured she would have to follow his lead. He sat down on the flattened hammock and waited for her to join.

"I'm fine, Thomas, really. Just eager, a little nervous maybe about what I might find."

"You need another day or two to think about it?"

"I need a good night's sleep tonight, and I could use a little help." Rose pressed his hand against her breast, but Thomas yanked it back.

"Shuck, what has got you all riled up?"

Rose collapsed back on the hammock and spread out, staring daggers at the ceiling. "Forget it. Let's just go to sleep."

Thomas laid down beside her, studying her profile for a long while with his cheek propped up on his hand. Without warning, he said, "Rose, I love you."

And just like that, she forgot everything, including how to breathe or blink—she almost forgot her own name again. Every muscle swelled with adrenaline and yet locked into place. She felt like running but couldn't move. She felt like responding but couldn't speak. She wanted to feel something—anything—but could only feel numb.

Thomas waited expectantly for a reply, but when he got none, he sighed, ran a hand through her curls and said, "Please be safe tomorrow, okay? Good night."

"Good night," Rose mouthed and stared up through the ceiling into the waiting chasm of the galaxy.

"Big day tomorrow, Madeline," Dr. Espina said with bright eyes.

"Finally," Dr. Thorne trumpeted. "Now let's see if the chickens come home to roost at last. Have you already started preparations for the last Directives?"

"They've been teed up. Shouldn't be long now once Subject A7 and XX start their exploration of the Maze."

Dr. Thorne smirked and then checked her emotions. "Will the Chancellor be joining us in the morning?"

"She said she would view it in her office."

"Pity, but then I know how much she always favored Rosalind. I imagine these next few weeks might be hard for her to watch with an audience, especially with how Subject XX reacted after Directive 3.3." Dr. Thorne took a moment to cover her mouth, but she could not entirely conceal her smile and she coughed instead.

Dr. Espina shrugged one shoulder. "I don't care either way as long as we get the promised readings. XX's Light Box is all over the place tonight. It's more jumbled than a Kandinsky."

"We're about to turn everything on its head once and for all, Raúl. I say another month, two tops, and we'll either have what we need, or we'll scrap the Protocol and start over. Now, let's turn in. I don't want to miss a minute of tomorrow."

* * *

 _A/N: Rose's song for Newt is actually called "Inisheer", and you can find a very lovely version played by Fiona Cuthill on Youtube. I had already selected the melody for Newt before I found out there were lyrics, and then I died a little when I read them. They're perfect for the two of them._


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter Nineteen**

 _Raiden – Heart of Steel_

Rose stood at the foot of the South Door and craned her head back. The concrete columns stretched into forever, so formidable that her heart stuttered as she assessed them. Rationally, she knew she had been inside them lots of times—hell, she had its blueprints in her memory—but standing just outside its cavernous maw made her feel insignificant, useless even.

Anil joined Rose's side, staring into the smoky interior with more clinical apathy than anything else. Despite the dread she felt building in her chest, it buoyed her heart to see the Keeper of the Baggers had chosen her Door to guard for the day—his way of looking out for her.

"You have succeeded in your endeavors, little Rose Bush, so why do you hesitate now?" he said without preamble.

"Is it stupid to say I don't know?"

"Perhaps a little," Anil replied. As cutting as ever. Rose shot him an affronted look, but he stared at her so placidly, all she could do was laugh.

"You're a real ballbuster, my friend," she joked though he didn't seem to get it. "You're right though. I just gotta get over myself, get psyched up. I can do this. I can find us a way out."

"I think it is easier if you just go in."

Rose froze mid-"pump up" dance and sucked her teeth. The man would make one hell of a life coach. She took another step closer.

"Well, if it isn't Dr. Shuckette and the Ghost Warden," Minho chimed as he emerged from the woods. Evidently, the Runner had chosen to take his breakfast to go in favor of a warm-up jog before his first day back in the Maze. "Ready for a career change, Doc?"

"As I'll ever be," Rose answered.

Minho scoped her out quickly. "Too bad about the new uniform."

"Hope you had your fun because I'm in this until we get out of here," she replied, glancing down at the return of the white-now-yellowed tank top and cargo pants. Max had done an admirable job of getting out the stains, but the memory of her deluge in muck would forever linger. She hoped she didn't smell. All the more reason to get out of this place quickly and into real human clothes again.

"I will be here waiting when you come back, little Rose Bush," Anil said. Then he turned his unflappable gaze to his fellow Keeper. "And you, peacock, do not take any unnecessary risks with my friend."

"Peacock?" Minho echoed, running his hands along the elegant swoop of his hair.

"Come on, Feathers," Rose teased, "let's get this show on the road."

Her toes met the line of demarcation between the concrete floor and the last straggler blades of grass. She steadied her breathing and licked her bottom lip before lifting her foot. It came down on the stone floor with a soft thud that reverberated down the length of the corridor ahead of her. A breeze belched forth from the guts of the Maze, a foul stench of rotting vegetation and stale breath from a mouth that seemed to have been closed for centuries. As the air whooshed over Rose, it brought her direction.

Her feet took off underneath of her, at first in a light jog, but, as she came to the first fork in the corridor, Rose plunged heedlessly left. She ran ahead, eyes open wider than they'd ever been, as her arms pumped and her body guided her as a faithful compass.

Behind her, Minho shouted, "Stop, you shuck-face! You don't know where you're going!"

But Rose did. Her mind might not remember this place, but her muscles did. They were filled with it, consumed with her understanding of it.

"Keep up, slow poke," she chided over her shoulder as she whipped sharply around a blind corner, her feet bounding off the base of the wall.

Rose had never felt more confident, in an imposing place she couldn't exactly remember no less. She felt like a damn queen.

Another left, and she stood in the middle of a four-way junction, spinning wildly around as she looked up. She laughed, borderline maniacally. "I know this. I've been here, haven't I?"

Minho pulled up behind her, looking winded and angry. "Yes, you have, you stupid slinthead."

Rose grinned at him. At some point his insults had become more like pet names, and she laughed.

But Minho wasn't laughing. Hand at his wounded hip, he stood up with a wince and pointed a finger in her face. "Listen here, you maniac, Alby's got his three rules out there in his Glade, I got my three rules in my Maze. First rule is non-negotiable: Keep up and never stop running. Never. Second: Don't run off on your own, especially when you're a loony, wet-behind-the-ears, shuck-faced know-it-all only running on ghosts of memories. Good that?"

A small smile played at Rose's lips. "Okay, okay. And the third?"

"Don't fall in love with me," Minho added with a dimpled smirk.

"Do you really tell that to all the Runners?" she asked with a withering gaze.

"Well, yeah. They all fall in love with me. I told you, the Maze is dangerous."

"It won't be a problem."

Minho shrugged, pulling in front of her this time to take the lead. "I won't blame you when you do."

Rose rolled her eyes. "You wanna lead, hotshot, then stop talking and lead. Take me somewhere you saw me before."

He nodded and dove down the right corridor under sagging ropes of sickly vines and in between thick coordinating curtains of crocodile green. Though Rose had enjoyed navigating unescorted through the Maze, she wasn't exactly going to complain about her new view. There was no denying that delightful sheen of sweat at the base of Minho's neck or the tug of his shirt across his shoulder blades with each pump of his arms or even the pleasant way his waist tapered to his hips. And then there was his ass. Yeah, the Queen of Perverts had looked.

 _No wonder those shucking Creators sent me birth control. I'm shameless._

Minho shouted over his shoulder, "Enjoying the view?"

"I—what? No. It's just walls. Nothing special," Rose managed lamely.

"You're breathing faster," he commented in an obnoxious sing-song.

"I'm running!"

Minho didn't look back, but Rose could hear his faux sigh resonate off the walls. "This is why we have Minho Rule Three."

"You smug asshole," she growled, more because he'd found her out than anything else.

The pair fell into a mutual silence while Minho piloted them deeper into the bowels of the Maze. Nothing else rang a bell for Rose. The further they got, the more everything looked the same. Rose's confidence had worn off when she started mistaking different patches of vines as ones she had already seen, and now she couldn't help but be impressed with Minho's ability to negotiate them. Like a sailor from a bygone era, he navigated by pinpoints of insignificant features—notches in the concrete or gouges he'd scratched over the years, even clumps of cut vines or piles of pebbles.

With nothing else to do—now that staring at Minho was off-limits or face an inquisition—Rose attempted to chart the walls with minimal success. Her only real takeaway was the sheer number of beetle blades that populated the unending sea of gray and green. There seemed to be at least one around every corner, each snapping to attention as they rounded each bend. Even in here, they were being watched.

Minho slowed to a stop in front of her. "Here, I saw you here before."

Rose followed his line of sight up to the top of the corridor wall, some thirty or forty feet above him. "How the hell did I even get up there?"

"Shuck if I know."

This wasn't the corridor from her dream, but if Minho said she had been here, she had been here. "What was I doing when you saw me?"

"You were waiting for me, sitting over the edge of the wall in your red dress."

"Did we talk?"

"I told you we never did." Minho said it bitterly, and the way his bottom lip protruded only reinforced his resentment.

"Then what happened?"

"You stood up and started running, but not like before. Before, you always seemed to have an immediate exit plan, like you'd scouted the perfect spot to appear and disappear. This time, you took off jogging along that curve up there so I could clearly see where you were headed."

"Chase me," Rose said suddenly. Minho looked at her, startled. "The Other Rose, Rosalind. I want to know where she went."

"Pretty sure that's what she wanted, too." The Runner trotted forward, talking as he followed the memory of his Shadow. "It was the most I'd ever seen of you. No way in hell I wasn't going to catch you this time. I started going faster, but you did, too."

Minho picked up speed in time with his memory, and Rose followed, doing her best to pull up alongside him. They ran together like that for almost ten minutes before he stopped again, this time his hand pressed against his hip. He grunted softly and said, "This is where you stopped."

"Then what?" Rose asked, glancing up at the crimson phantasm she pictured above her.

"You looked at me and jumped."

"What! That would kill me."

"You don't look dead," he observed.

Minho directed her around another blind bend on their left, where she found a notch about halfway down the wall. Even then, the drop was still fifteen or twenty feet, enough to do serious damage to a human body. Rosalind was either a damn adrenaline junkie or the world's best stunt woman.

"I heard your feet hit the ground, but by the time I had rounded all those bends, you were gone." To illustrate his point, the Runner showed her around the hairpin turns that almost immediately forked again in three different directions.

Minho gripped his hip tighter now, and Rose had to forgo her own inquiries to make sure he was okay. "You're pushing yourself too hard, Minho. Your skin might have closed, but the muscles will take longer, especially if you drive yourself too fast. Let's call it a day."

But he shook his head. "I'm fine. Lunch first."

It seemed a reasonable enough request, and after all that exercise, Rose was looking for any excuse to park her butt and stuff her face. Lunch was quiet, spent mostly in the gloomy company of the ghosts of their former selves, but eventually, Rose couldn't stand the silence anymore.

"Why do you think the Other Me did all that stuff?"

Minho's apple froze mid-way to his mouth. "I don't know why you do the things you do now. Don't ask me to figure out an even crazier version of you."

"Minho?"

He growled as he pulled the apple away again before he could take a bite.

"It's really impressive how you know every inch of this Maze."

"I know," he said flatly.

Rose fought the urge to roll her eyes. "My point is, you obviously know this place inside and out, so why do you think you haven't found the way out?"

Minho dropped the apple into his backpack with a sour scowl. "You sayin' you think it's hiding in plain sight, like some kind of trick?"

She shrugged. "Rosalind had to get in and out somehow. Either that or maybe the Creators will only let us out when they want to."

Minho hummed for a moment before he said, "Time to move, woman."

Rose had to help Minho to his feet, so she knew it was time to head back. She pivoted toward where she suspected the entrance would be, but her partner stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

"Not yet, there's one more place in this Section I need to take you. I need to see if you remember." Minho's final words were urgent, just on the other side of outright pleading. Eyes of chocolate flecked with nutmeg peered back at her with insistence.

Rose's curiosity won out and she acquiesced. "Light jogging only, and if I think you can't handle that, you'll have to walk. I am _not_ carrying you all the way back from out here, so choose wisely."

Minho nodded and selected a gentle jog that peppered the preternatural quiet of the Maze with the shuffle of his boots. More wild bends and a narrow stretch of corridor made tighter by chunky waterfalls of vines convoluted their path until Rose's head was spinning with all the twists and turns.

Suddenly, Minho jerked Rose around a blind curve and slammed her back into a crook where a wall met an endcap. He knocked the breath from her lips right into his panting mouth. His face was close, but his body was closer. His chest crushed hers as one of his hands braced next to her ear and the other next to her hip. One of his thighs framed the outside of her leg while his other nestled between hers. Something rattled in his ribs like a panther growl. The spice in Minho's eyes intensified while his already deep voice dropped another octave.

"Remember anything yet?"

Rose squinted at him, trying not to give him any more of a reaction than surprise. He had promised new ways to tease her, and maybe he was trying to deliver, but this didn't feel like one of Minho's games. It felt real. It felt important.

Naturally, Rose had to deflect. "Yeah, just how unbelievably weird you are."

He grunted and let her go, taking off jogging immediately and leaving her a breathless, confused mess. Minho was her blind spot, and Rose could never make out his intentions.

"Minho!" she called after him. "Minho, stop. I'm sorry. Was I supposed to? Was that the place you wanted to show me?"

His feet slowed to a walk then a reluctant stop. There was vehemence in his tone now underlined with something like resentment. "How do you remember a shucking pet mouse or your favorite damn drink or that you were fucking dating Thomas before you got here, but you don't remember—" Minho cut himself off and shifted into a more defeated sound. "Forget it. Today's been a complete waste. The only thing you remember is that you've been here before, which you already shucking knew."

So, Newt or Alby had filled him in on all of her little secrets, but Minho seemed much angrier about them than either of the other men had, especially bitter about her past with Thomas, enough to break out her favorite expletive. The force of his anger punched her in the chest, and she felt something sharp and unexpected, something like failure.

"Hey," Rose said, feeling a little affronted, "I'm sorry I can't remember whatever it is you want. That's not how this works."

"Believe me, I'm well aware I can't make you do anything you don't want to."

"Minho, just give me time."

He ran a hand back through his hair and turned away from her. "I guess we've got all the time in the world until your brain decides to remember a way out or your buddies outside those Walls decide to let you back in."

The Keeper took off again and refused to stop for another word until they were back at the Glade. They passed Anil, who was waiting as promised, but Rose couldn't take the time to acknowledge him as she was still chasing Minho.

"Hey, slinthead, would you stop? At least let me check your wound!"

"It's fine!" he shouted before disappearing into the Homestead. A minute later, she heard a door slam and knew she wouldn't see Minho for the rest of the night.

* * *

"How'd it go in the Maze today, Rose?" Chuck asked cheerfully beside her.

After the intense weirdness with Minho, Rose needed the comfort of the last innocent kid in Glade, and she leaned against his shoulder at the dinner table, but even Chuck's exuberant smile and cherub cheeks couldn't dispel the strange guilt that Rose felt deep in her chest. Somehow she had disappointed Minho today, maybe even wounded him, but she couldn't understand why.

It wasn't fair that she was the only one getting her memories back, and because of it, everything rested on her. If Rose didn't deliver a way out, they thought it was because she didn't want to remember, not because she couldn't. In a way, she wished she were still as ignorant to her past life as any of them. Being the only woman was hard enough, but being the only Glader with tangible memories was even worse.

"I didn't remember anything, if that's what you're asking," Rose grumbled.

But Newt smiled. "It was only your first day. Nobody really expected you to."

"Minho did."

"Where is that stubborn shank anyway?" Thomas asked from her other side.

Rose sneered at her plate of shredded chicken. "Doing whatever the hell he wants, I imagine."

The others seemed surprised by her surliness, but Newt laughed. "Oh, bloody hell, did any of you really expect anything different after sticking those two together in the Maze all day? Just be thankful one didn't leave the other for the Grievers."

"Believe me, I thought about it," Rose concurred.

"What's it like in there?" Chuck asked, his eyes filled with a mixture of awe and fear.

Rose pondered for a minute. Her thoughts had been so consumed with Minho's nonsense that she hadn't taken time to reflect on the place that had meant so much since she'd awoken in the Glade.

"Not what I expected. Kinda boring, if I'm honest, just the same thing over and over again. Of course, it's confusing, too, but I think I'd just built it up to be something, I dunno, more."

"More what?" Chuck pressed.

"More anything. It's a lot of concrete."

"Wait until you see a Griever," snapped Alby, "then you'll wish it was a lot less."

Rose recalled the story Chuck had once told her about Alby being stung by a Griever and the hell he'd endured to survive it. She wished she could suck her words right back into her mouth.

Thomas laid a hand on her wrist, garnering her full attention. "Did you want to run with me tomorrow, Rose?"

She shot him a tight smile. "Soon. There are still a couple other Sections left to visit where Minho'd seen me that I'd like to visit. Hopefully I can remember something there."

"You will, Rose," Chuck said, bumping her shoulder with his. "You're, like, the coolest person here."

"Down, boy," Thomas teased as he reached behind Rose to clap the kid on the back.

Newt smirked. "Oy, could you imagine if His High-and-Shuckiness had heard that? You'd be blacklisted for a month, Chuckie."

Dinner finished happier than it had started, and Rose was reluctant to head home, especially with Thomas to accompany her. She hadn't forgotten what he'd confessed last night, and being alone with him in her room only let the memory weigh heavier on her, but she couldn't exactly say no without it turning into a big deal.

Her clothes were sticky from her run, so she asked Thomas to grab something else from her crate to sleep in. Too late, Rose realized her mistake and braced. As he rifled around, his fingers closed on an open box of her pills.

"Rose, have you been taking these?"

She froze, her stomach doing a flip-flop somewhere between professional gymnastics and breakdancing. Honestly, at first, she had barely realized she was taking one—she had just wanted to read about them—but then it had felt like habit, and she had popped it, swallowing it dry. The next few days, she'd taken another and another. It had only been a little while, but Rose had been loath to admit her weakness to anyone, even Thomas. She couldn't even find the strength to nod.

"Does that mean… you want…" There was the subtlest uptick of hope, maybe even desire, at the edge of his voice.

"I don't know what I want, Thomas," Rose blurted. "I just know I don't want to be stupid or unprepared anymore. I don't care if it makes me look like a whore or a hypocrite or a terrible person. I'm probably all of those things anyway, but I just don't care anymore. Every day I wake up having no clue what I'm doing. The Creators might have given me these fucking things to mess with my head, but the joke's on them—I'm already completely fucked up in there."

Thomas swept her into a fierce hug. "We all are, Rose. And I need you to know that I don't think any of those things about you. I just want to be with you in any way you want me to be."

Her arms slipped up under his, and she rubbed her cheek into his chest, trying not to think about his profession of love again and the fact that she couldn't find the three words inside herself to respond. They'd never even labeled their relationship. Thomas did all the things a boyfriend did, now even said the things a boyfriend did, and yet Rose couldn't form the word "boyfriend" on the tip of her tongue. She wasn't lying to him or herself when she said she was fucked up in the head—she was.

It was easier just to melt into Thomas, into those thrumming vibrations between the two of them, than talk about her jumbled feelings, but as they fell to her pitiful bed on the floor and his thumb rubbed away all of her frustrations from the day, in the back of that fucked-up head of hers, Rose couldn't help but feel their tuning forks, which had always resonated at the same pitch, were now vibrating at different wavelengths.

* * *

At her gray wall tonight, Rose tried something different. Straight through wasn't unearthing what she needed anymore, but more than that, she just felt like dismantling something. She craved a revelation, something other than her favorite holiday or the cover of a book she'd once read. She wanted more of Rosalind, something that could define the woman she'd once been. Evidently, the undead hands were less concerned by what she'd find tunneling with the curve of the wall instead of through it because they were nowhere in sight, almost like they were granting her permission to excavate a new truth.

Changing directions brought Rose swiftly to another pearl, one of the larger ones she had uncovered though not as big as the "WICKED is good" one she had yet to interpret. It had a beautiful sheen to it, a kind of shimmering iridescence that reflected the white light of the tidal waters and dappled the tunnel walls like a disco ball. She was mesmerized by its radiance and compelled by its luminescent secrets.

It was even more beautiful when it was in her hand. Smooth like glass and light as a cloud, Rose glossed her thumb across it, and as she did, the images beneath its convex casing bobbed to the surface of the milky mists inside and shifted the world around her until she was no longer in a wall but surrounded by them.

Rosalind was exhilarated. Her heart thumped, not just from running but from being on the same level as he was. It was always more dangerous. So much more could happen down here, and today, so much more would. Everything was about to change.

She had calculated this weeks ago, waiting patiently for the day Subject A7 would be exactly where she would need him to be, and soon he would be. Rosalind knew his patterns better than she knew her own. She knew how he liked to run and with whom. She knew what parts of the Maze made him more cautious and what parts made him more reckless. Thanks to the early success of her Directives, Rosalind knew he'd be running at first light, knew he'd be taking more chances to see her again, especially in those Sections where he felt most familiar. A place just like this one. He'd come through here alone, she'd bet her life on it—she was betting her life on it. She was betting all their lives on it.

The weather was more fortuitous than she had hoped, cooler than usual with a bite at her cheeks as she pressed through the early morning dampness. The walls of the Maze were stained vermillion with the edges of dawn. Rosalind remembered a saying for days like this, something her mother liked to sing as she washed the breakfast dishes and stared out the window: "Red skies at morning, sailors take warning."

A storm was coming to be sure.

A7 would be here soon, just where she needed him to be, but time was short—it always was for them—and there were other variables, too. Rosalind monitored the scuttle of every beetle blade in the vicinity and was relieved to find them exactly where she had anticipated. She had memorized their stations as well as their patrols because, even though beetle blades didn't bother with her, as soon as a Subject entered, they would reroute and all hell would break loose. Rosalind would have to rely on her intimate knowledge of their programming to outsmart them. WICKED didn't know about Directive 1.5—they couldn't, not if she expected to succeed with the rest of the Protocol.

As she grew nearer to the staging ground, guilt flared expectedly in Rosalind's chest. She'd been combating it for a long time now—hell, it had been her brain's default emotion for over a decade—but this particular flavor of guilt savored more of shame.

Thomas was already gone, both physically removed from her as well as Swiped, but that didn't justify what she was planning any more than it did if he were still there. Rosalind had created this Directive before he left, and she hadn't bothered to tell him about it, but then trust between them had always been at the crux of their relationship. She knew exactly where she ranked in the hierarchy of Thomas' heart, especially when it came to WICKED, and, to be fair, it wasn't any different than her own, but it made giving her whole self to someone else a low priority.

Rosalind shook the spirits from her head. No more time for that now, no more time for anything other than her Directive.

She heard telltale footsteps racing down the corridor in the same quick 1-2-1-2 pattern she had counted like a metronome for months. She matched his steps to her internal chronometer and waited.

Her arms twitched, flinching as they anticipated their perfect timing.

 _Steady, Rosalind, steady._

Forceful puffs of breath chugged closer somewhere behind her. Rosalind's body was alive with sensation, from the high-pitched whistle of the wind over the stony lips of the wall to the rush of dizziness juddering her brain as the pressure dropped with the oncoming storm.

 _Three, two, one._

Rosalind's arm shot into the unknown and snagged the backpack of her Subject. She thrust him ahead of her, punching with her shoulder as she drove him forward like a battering ram, juking right, left, quick right again, until finally she pushed him into a shallow notch where a wall flared out. With her forearm for a brace, Rosalind slammed his back against the wall and pinned him there.

A7's eyes were wide. Shock, confusion, surprise. Arousal. Plain as day, she could see it. She could feel it through the cotton pleats of her dress as the length of her body conspired to hold him down.

A few errant drops of rain blessed the receptive skin at Rosalind's exposed collar as her ears picked up the static drum of a driving shower just outside the sheltering walls of the Maze. One bead of water splattered on the tip of A7's nose and dripped cruelly onto his lips swollen from a rush of blood.

"We don't have much time," she said breathlessly before she crushed her mouth against his.

Rosalind could have pecked him on the lips—that was all her Directive called for and it was all she really had time for. That would be all it would take to usher in Phase Two of the Protocol, but she was here now and A7 was under her control, and she didn't want "just a peck."

She tasted the freshness of the rain first, followed by the salt of his sweat, and then finally she tasted him. Dirt and dust and strawberry and buckwheat and frustration and single-minded determination. His lips parted for her, as much from his breathless exertion as his insatiable hunger for a woman he could not name. Rosalind knew she shouldn't—she was still counting down her time until drop-dead must-escape-this-insanity took over—but she curled her tongue along his bottom lip, and A7 straight up moaned into her mouth. She felt the vibrations of his desire tremble through her lips into her mouth and down into her belly.

Her free hand snaked up the back of his neck into his freshly-razored hair. It was soft and ticklish and a little greasy from a few days without a wash, and Rosalind drove her fingers higher through it until they grabbed a fistful of longer hairs at his crown. She jerked his head to the side to allow her tongue more access into those delicious recesses of his mouth.

Another moan, this time from her.

"Minho," Rosalind whispered into him.

 _Shit._

Too personal. She'd really stepped in it now. And she was out of time. No way to undo what she'd said, and she'd have to live with the guilt of this added layer of betrayal in the meantime. Her only consolation was that in a few weeks' time she would forget this had ever happened, but for now…

Rosalind dragged her lips up and over his one last time as she nuzzled the side of her nose against his, wondering if this was how she could say hello and goodbye all at the same time.

With that, Rosalind pushed off of A7 as she detected the skitter of a wave of agitated beetle blades along the walls, and she raced to her exit. Just as she had expected, her Target Subject was too stunned to move. She had failed, however, to anticipate how jelly-like her own legs had become, how sloppy her movements were. Rosalind could only pray she had vanished before the last beetle blade invaded their temple of crossed lines.


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter Twenty**

 _Jero – Paradise (ft. DOK2)_

Over the next month, on the alternating days when she wasn't apprenticing with Clint, Rose and Minho ran three other Sections where Minho had spotted her alter-ego. On a few occasions, they had heard the odd sucking roll and click of a Griever somewhere in the Maze, but Minho always seemed to be one step ahead of it, and Rose had yet to actually see one of the beasts. Now that she was in the Maze every day, they had stopped calling to her and no more threatening messages had appeared. Of course, it was a tenuous balance, and she knew the truce wouldn't hold, but at least the Maze was granting her some time to figure out what it wanted from her.

Otherwise, Rose tried to fill her day with as much running as possible; it was harder to think when her body was too busy gasping for air and straining to complete her next step.

Several weeks had passed, and though she had spent the vast majority of her time with Minho running sunrise to sunset, Rose still hadn't found the guts to tell him she had remembered what he had begged her so desperately to remember—she wasn't even sure how to bring it up. They would sit across from each other in the corridors of the Maze, eating lunch and talking about strategy or the other Gladers or whatever absurdities popped into their minds, and it was inevitable with every one of those meals that Rose would catch a glimpse of the vivid umber in Minho's eyes and feel compelled to confess. Or worse, kiss him again.

Minho had returned to his usual sarcastic self without another allusion to that fateful day, but now it was Rose with the awkward hang-up. The seed of their shared memory had germinated in the fertile chambers of her heart, and the weed had grown exponentially, crowding out other seedlings until it was finally in full bloom.

In the past, Rose's hormonal mind had indulged in fleeting imaginations of what it would be like to kiss the man who drove her crazier than a Griever sting could, but she had always been able to stamp down those wild notions where they belonged. But Minho had had months of time separating them from their kiss; Rose felt like she was still in it. She could still the taste the breakfast he had eaten that morning. She could still feel his body pressed against hers, all of him.

It didn't help that every time she looked at him, her eyes now fell to his lips. Damnit, they were the color of her fucking name, like they were literally made for her.

But Rose couldn't let herself fall into Rosalind's habits. They were the reason Minho resented her. Rosalind had manipulated him for months, teased him, enticed him, baited him. It didn't matter that toward the end she had felt something very real for the subject of their experiments—Minho had still been an experiment. And then the damn fool woman had kissed him, all for some darker purpose Rose didn't understand, another damn Directive. The only good that had come with her newfound knowledge was a name for the Creators other than "sadistic bastards."

WICKED.

Rose had seen the word on the crates that came up from the Box or sheltering under tapestries of vines in the Maze, and, of course, on the backs of those ghastly centipedes that watched her everywhere she went.

 _WICKED is good._

That enormous pearl that had been stashed in her wall of forgotten memories had now been implanted inside her chest again, and even though Rose wanted to hold nothing but resentment for the monsters who put her here, she couldn't. She was one of them. More than that, she felt some sickly, revolting truth to the mantra. It wasn't just a saying—it was a core belief. A mission.

Rose couldn't even confess her sins to Newt and Alby, despite her promise. She could only imagine what they would do to her. The thought of losing their friendship was terrifying and isolating, but selfishly, even more than that, she would be admitting that Alby and Gally, even Anil and the loathsome Ender had all been right about her. She couldn't be trusted, she was dangerous, and she really could get them all killed. If she didn't acknowledge it, maybe it wouldn't be true.

Another day in the Maze had concluded with nothing new to resurrect memories, and Rose and Minho trotted back through the East Doors, waving to Billy on their reentry. As they slowed to a walk, her partner looped one arm around her shoulders as he often did on their sweatier days—he knew how much Rose hated to be touched when she already roasting.

"Another shuckin' scorcher. We should shower together to conserve water."

It had been Minho's favorite tease recently, especially because it never failed to elicit a gasp or a scowl from her, except today. Rose had been expecting it and shouted "Gally!" across the Glade before Minho covered her mouth with his other hand.

"You're gonna get me killed," he hissed in her ear.

She yanked his hand from her mouth and gave him a playful shove backward. "That's the idea, numbskull."

"I'm just trying to be environmentally-conscious, jeez."

Rose shared a reluctant smile with Minho because, damnit, it was impossible not to when that little crescent appeared at his cheek. "You never give up, do you?"

"That's why I'm the Keeper of the Runners, beautiful," he replied, wrapping his arm tighter around shoulder so she was flush against his side.

 _Beautiful_.

Another flashback to Rosalind and the bright flourish of heat she had felt the last time Minho had called her that. Rose caught herself staring at the profile of his lips. She had to admire how full they were, especially with the silky butterscotch of the sinking sun to highlight them.

 _God, what a shuck-face I am_ ,she scolded herself.

As they approached the Homestead, Rose shrugged out from under Minho's embrace and waved to Newt, who was hammering a board into the siding. "I gotta see Mom and you need a shower badly—I'd know, being that close to your reeking pits."

Minho sniffed his armpit and frowned. "Thanks for the clinical assessment, Dr. Shuckette. Your days with Clint are really paying off."

"I hate you," she sneered.

"Translation: you love me," he retorted with a wink. Before Rose could respond, he waved and jogged toward the bathrooms. "Later, Doc!"

Rose made for the Builders, who were beginning to pack up their tools for the evening. Everyone's skin was shimmering in the sunshine, and it was easy to appreciate their toned muscles when they were sweaty and shirtless. She offered them a tight-lipped smile to prevent the ogle her brain so desperately wanted to make.

 _Queen of the Perverts…_ her brain warned.

"Did I hear you calling me, Legs?" Gally asked as he descended a rickety ladder and wiped his forehead with his forearm, only succeeding in smudging a long line of grease through his eyebrow like an X.

She shook her head. "Forget about it. Just threatening Minho—you know, the usual."

"With me?" Gally raised his eyebrows. "Was he scared?"

"Terrified," she replied, and the Keeper of the Builders beamed, no doubt already preparing his jibes for dinner.

Rose turned her attention to the blonde teen who leaned against a stack of rough-hewn boards, pulling every muscle in his abdomen taut until he was nothing but smooth lines and fair skin. Newt may have been her best friend, but he was also a downright handsome man, and it was hard to think platonic thoughts when his obvious attributes were spotlighted by droplets of liquid gold.

 _Okay, that's just not fair,_ she thought.

Rose tried to clear her throat discreetly, but from the cock of his eyebrow, he noticed it. "Hey, Newt, you got a minute?"

"Sure, what's up?" he said, straightening up and thankfully breaking the weird spell that had fallen over them.

"I need my friend. You're the only one who can make things make sense when I'm this crazy."

Newt grinned. "Have dinner with me."

"What are you talking about? I always do."

"I mean just the two of us. We can eat in the Orchard, no one ever goes there anymore." Then he added quickly, "You can tell me whatever you want without any of these shanks overhearing."

Newt was right—after Cat, the Gladers tended to steer clear of the place unless there was work to be done. Still, the thought of eating dinner without a crowd felt a bit strange. Aside from lunch with Minho, which felt more like work than relaxation, Rose was used to an audience with her meals.

"You know the Wolfpack will follow. They always do."

"Find an excuse and meet me." He was surprisingly adamant.

"Oh- _kay_ , I'll see you there."

The pair exchanged secret smiles before parting ways.

Rose wrangled Gally to watch the showers for her right as Minho walked out, a towel secured around his waist as blades of his hair dripped water onto his chest. His hand ruffled through the back of his hair to shed more droplets across their skin like a dog shaking off.

 _They've all got to be screwing with me today._ It was if the entire Glade had had a secret Gathering just to mess with Rose's already messed-up head.

Her gaze planted at the scar at Minho's hip, which had turned out minimal as she had hoped, but against his tanned skin, it stood out as a perfect peach stripe pointing directly to those tantalizing hairs leading beneath the cinch of his towel.

"Eyes up here, shankette," he crowed.

"I was just checking how your scar looks," Rose fumbled, which only made the blush at her cheeks deepen and Gally squint at her.

Minho hummed in response and Rose blew by them both into the safety of the showers. Today, she ran the water on extra cold, but she still felt overheated.

Thankfully, when she got out, most of the boys had either gone to dinner or were getting ready for it. Gally offered to walk her to the Kitchen, but Rose told him she needed something from her room and then doubled-back when most everyone was inside. With the coast clear, she used the side entrance for the Cooks into the Kitchen, and in exchange for three mornings' early work, Fry gave her a plate of food in the back so that no one would see her sneak out. There was a suspicious glint in his eye as he handed her the plate, but he said nothing.

It felt weird, like she was sneaking around, and if Rose thought about it, of course she knew she was, but could it really be sneaking if she just wanted to spend some time with her best friend? Nobody owned her; she could do what she wanted with whom. Then why did she feel so… awkward?

 _Because this is intimate, like a date,_ Rose realized.

But it was Newt, and he was her best friend, so it wasn't weird. People had private picnics in secluded woods with their best friends all the time in the other world, didn't they?

Newt had brought a blanket and spread it under the shadiest corner of the Orchard. "You made it."

He was already sitting at the top with his plate in front of him, wearing a new white t-shirt Rose had never seen before along with the toothy grin always reserved for her. His unkempt bangs stirred the whiskey in his eyes as a light breeze tickled them, and he glanced to the empty space beside him. Newt looked so hopeful, like how Rose had pictured him in those final cresting notes of the song she had written him.

She shouldn't be here. This felt too secluded, and his smile was too beautiful. But Rose needed her friend because she was buckling under the weight of her mounting secrets. She had nowhere else to turn, and without some advice, she was bound to make even more crippling mistakes.

Rose sat on the other side of the blanket at a respectable distance before they spent a while catching up on their days, talking about the finally-finished cellar for Frypan and gossiping about the new Greenie, a towhead named JD.

"It's so pretty out," Rose sighed as she turned her face into the gathering wind. The air was cool at last and crisp as gray clouds edged out the sorbet sky. "I wish I had my fiddle with me."

"While I'd love that, that'd just be another reason to avoid talking about why you wanted to see me. Unless you just said that to get me alone?" Newt prodded.

"Thomas told me he loved me."

Rose covered her mouth a second too late. The words were already out.

Newt froze, his jaw so tense he could barely open it to ask, "When?"

"Like, a month ago," she mumbled.

His voice and his eyes dipped. "Oh."

"And I haven't said it back."

Just like that, his eyes were back on her. "Oh."

"Because I don't think I can. Is that horrible? It feels really horrible saying it out loud. I'm a horrible person," she yammered.

"If you don't feel the same, Rose, why are you still with him?"

It was such an obvious question, but Rose's answer felt so much more complicated. "I dunno. We've felt connected since the beginning. Thomas is all I've really known, especially from our shared past, and it's comfortable. I guess I thought I owed it to him to keep trying to feel what I felt—what he feels. I thought maybe I would have another memory about us and it might rekindle what we had, but everything else I've remembered has actually pulled me further from him.

"I'm fucked up in the head, Newt," Rose continued as she stared hard at the blanket. "I know I've done terrible things, I'm still doing terrible things. I'm not a good person."

Her friend shook his head vehemently as he replied in a stern voice, "You think any of us are? Rose, we send people to their deaths just because we can't deal with their klunk—because we're afraid. We look into our friends' faces as those Doors shut on them and we listen to their screams at night as they're torn apart. If you knew what I've done, you'd think less of me, too. At least you're honest about who you were. Most days, I can't even be honest about who I am."

His eyes were far away, staring at the Walls with such hatred, for them and for himself. "Newt, you know I'd never think anything less of you, right? You can always talk to me, tell me anything—I don't care what it is."

There was a long silence as the breeze feathered their hair and stirred their hearts. "Do you ever feel like you're missing something?"

"You mean besides the obvious?" she teased lightly.

But Newt's eyes were soft while his gaze was firm. "Like there's a hole in your head and one in your heart."

Rose stilled. Somehow Newt had just perfectly summed up her entire existence since she'd woken up in the Med-hut. But where Rose had started to fill in those gaps, Newt seemed as incomplete as ever. All that cheerful warmth he exuded, was it all a mask?

"I do—I did," she said slowly.

"Who's in your heart, Rose?"

It was almost a whisper, and she wasn't sure she heard him right. "What?"

"It's nothing," he asserted and finally brought his full attention back to her. "Besides, it's not about me now. So, you want me to tell you what to do about Tommy? I think you already know, you just don't want to do it."

Rose sighed deeply as she stared up into the canopy. Newt was right, she did know what she needed to do; she just wanted to hear someone else tell her it was the right thing.

"There's something else," she began hesitantly and Newt leaned forward. With a wince, she said, "I kissed Minho."

"What."

"Well, not me, the other me, Rosalind. From your face, I take it he never told you about it?"

Newt shook his head, his lips still hanging open.

"I remembered it a couple of weeks ago—I remember everything she felt when she did it, too—and it's got me all confused."

"Confused how?"

Rose's cheeks reddened to the point she thought they might blister from the heat inside her, and she drew up her knees to her chest, hoping to make herself as small as possible as she wished all this insanity could be erased from her mind with the rest of her memories. "I think Rosalind had some kind of feelings for him, like, personal feelings. And now I'm feeling them, too, and none of it makes any sense. Please don't mention any of this to Alby. There are just some things he doesn't need to know."

Newt had barely moved since she confessed, compounding Rose's total humiliation. She peeked up from behind her knees to find him staring back at the Walls. "Do you like him?"

"Minho? He's annoying and arrogant and makes me so angry I can't see straight, but somehow he's my friend and he never doubts me or my abilities and I trust him with my life every day."

"That's not really an answer, Rose."

"I don't have an answer," she grumbled into her knees.

"Rose." Newt said her name wistfully, and she felt the urge to lean into the sound. "If I had still been a Runner—if things had been different—do you think it would have been me instead of Minho?"

She blinked. "That's kind of a weird question. I don't know, Newt. I don't even know why Rosalind chose him, or if it was even her who did. I mean, would you really have wanted it to be you? She did some pretty messed-up things— _I_ did some pretty messed-up things."

Newt moved his empty plate aside so he could turn his body to face her. He ran his hands through his bangs a few times before funneling all of that once-faraway attention directly onto her. His eyes traveled up from her knees to her shoulders, gliding over her neck as smoothly as his fingers could have, until they met her gaze.

"Rose, I need to tell you something, but before I do, I need you to promise me that you'll still be my friend no matter what."

She laid a hand on top of his, trying to be as serious as everything suddenly felt. "Of course, always, through anything."

Newt turned his hand over in hers so their fingers linked. "I think if I tell you this just once, everything will hurt less."

Rose rubbed her thumb encouragingly along his thumb. He looked so afraid. "You're kind of freaking me out, Newt."

"Where the hell have you two shuck-heads been?" Minho said as he strolled through the Orchard with his usual careless swagger. He plopped down at the far corner of the blanket, legs stretched languidly in front of him as he leaned back onto his forearms.

Newt scowled. His words were unusually sharp as he said, "Just having dinner."

"Kind of hard to eat when you're holding hands," the Runner observed.

Rose jerked her hand from Newt's and frowned at her Running partner. "I was having a genuine conversation with my friend, not that you'd know anything about that. And anyway, what are you doing here, Minho? We literally spent all day together, what could you possibly want?"

He swiped a bit of uneaten food from Rose's plate and shrugged one shoulder. "I wanted to talk to Newt."

Nobody said a word for a minute before Rose groaned and collapsed back onto the blanket. "Well?"

"I forgot what I was going to say."

Newt and Rose exchanged helpless looks before resigning themselves to fact that their dinner was over. Newt had given her a lot of things to consider, and she was grateful for the minutes they had managed to steal. Rose's heart and head were still turbulent, but at least she had direction.

As they gathered things up, Newt grabbed her wrist and whispered, "Don't wait another night. It's not fair to Tommy."

Rose stilled. "I don't want to hurt him."

"Dragging it out will only hurt worse."

"I know," she trailed off. She glanced at Minho's retreating head and whispered, "What about the other thing?"

"I can't tell you that, Rose. More to the point, I don't bloody want to. The only thing I want is for you to be happy. You need to figure out if he could make you happy."

Rose nodded slowly. "I'm sorry about Minho."

Newt's lips twisted up in an ironic smile. "It's bound to happen when it comes to you."

She gripped his wrist this time and squeezed lightly. "Didn't you have something you wanted to tell me?"

"Another time maybe, love."

"Don't keep me in the dark, Newt. If it's bothering you, it's bothering me. You can tell me anything, no judgments, okay?"

"Okay."

Rose wished her friend goodnight and headed back to her room, thankful for the reassuring melody of the Gladers' bedtime routines: the brushing of teeth, the rush of showers, the slamming of doors, the creaking of posts as boys sagged into hammocks; it helped her focus on what Newt had said. Rose had made up her mind about Thomas, but she hadn't figured out what Minho meant to her yet.

She was attracted to him—that much was painfully, inescapably obvious—but could she be happy with him? Minho aggravated her, teased her, defied her. He was arrogant and pushy, but the more time Rose had spent with him, the more she realized most of that was superficial. It was their foreplay, and she realized she loved it. When it came down to it, Minho was the one person who always saw through Rose and her bullshit. He had kept her out of the Maze not because she was a fragile girl who couldn't hack it but because she was a formidable variable.

And under all that bravado, Minho cared about her. Those fleeting moments when he let her into his guarded heart made Rose's breath catch. She wanted more of them. She wanted more of him.

Rose didn't know why Rosalind had chosen Minho, but she now understood why, somewhere along the way, Rose had. He was handsome and brave and strong, all things that would attract any foolish teenage girl, but he also trusted her, challenged her, and ultimately believed in her, something that attracted the woman she wanted to be.

By the time Rose reached her room, the evening sky had been completely overtaken by leaden mountains of clouds, extending the gray reach of the Walls miles higher into the sky. The only light she could see, other than the ruddy gaze of a few nearby beetle blades, was the waxy canary yellow that leaked through her cracked door.

Inside, Thomas waited stock-still in the middle of her room.

"You weren't at dinner tonight."

"No."

"Where were you?"

Rose twisted her ring finger nervously as she waited in her doorway. "Talking with Newt."

Thomas took a few steps closer, and her heart clenched. She had felt this moment building almost from the second she had left dinner, but Rose thought she would have more time to come up with an explanation worthy of a man like Thomas. She had wanted this all to be gentler, less accusatory. She wanted the safety of a public setting where she could escape the provocative heat of Thomas' eyes and his familiar smell of sun and stone.

"You're different, Rose."

"I know."

Thomas took another step closer, his mouth tightening before he said, "You've always been different from everyone else here, like me. We were different together, and I didn't feel so alone anymore. But I mean you're different than that now, too. You've changed. I don't know how or when, but when you're with me, I feel like you're not with me anymore. When I touch you, you're all I can feel, but you even feel different. Tell me I'm wrong, that I'm just making this all up."

Unexpectedly, Rose felt the first prick of tears in the corners of her eyes. She squeezed them shut, one icy traitor slipping through her bonds. "I can't."

Thomas finally pulled his gaze from her and she unleashed a strangled breath. She felt like collapsing to her knees. His voice was tight as he said, "You know, I'm pretty smart. I noticed that you didn't say you loved me back when I told you how I felt, but I figured maybe you just weren't ready. You'd love me back soon enough as long as I stayed by your side. But you don't love me, do you, Rose?"

She squeezed her eyes tighter, more tears spilling over her cheeks as her arms wrapped around herself in a desperate attempt to shield herself from the raw truth that was being torn out of her.

"No, not like that," Rose admitted as her breath hitched.

Thomas gripped her shoulders, not harshly but imploringly. "Tell me you care about me."

Rose willed herself to face the man she had been drawn to in two lifetimes. She owed Thomas so much more than this. She owed him honesty and sincerity as much as she owed herself the same things, but it was terrifying vocalizing the dark secrets of her heart.

"I do, Thomas. I'll always care about you, no matter how many times my memory's wiped, but that's why I have to let you go. I can't give you what you deserve. You deserve so much more. You deserve someone who will love you with their whole heart."

"Is it someone else? Newt? Minho?" His hands squeezed a notch tighter.

"I don't know what it is," she admitted. "Maybe, I don't know, but I don't feel the same as I used to. It's been coming on so gradually, and I wanted to be everything you deserve, and I just can't be that girl. Please don't hate me, Thomas. I can't bear the thought of you hating me."

"Hate you? Rose, I love you. You may not love me now, but that doesn't mean you never will. This connection we have? It's special. I can wait for it, Rose. I can wait for you." His hands smoothed up her shoulders to her cheeks as he cradled her face.

"Thomas, please, I'm not asking you to wait—"

His thumb stroked her cheek. "It doesn't matter if you do. I will because you're worth it." Though her heart had not swayed, Rose's body did, and she tipped forward, wrapping her arms around Thomas' chest and pressing her face into his shoulder. He hugged her close, his face in her hair. "I don't want to let go."

"Me either."

Thomas had been Rose's first kiss, first relationship, and who knew how many firsts for Rosalind; whatever else, he would always be special to her. She breathed his scent in deeply one last time.

Rose had no idea how long they'd been together in the Before, and here they'd only been together for a couple of months, but her heart throbbed. She couldn't know her future, and maybe Thomas was right, that they would yet again find their way back to each other someday, but today was not that day, and Rose loosened her grip.

Thomas backed up a step, his arms reluctantly dropping to his sides. His eyes were wet and the beige of his cheeks were tinted red, and yet there was some ghost of a smile playing at his lips. "I don't give up easily."

Despite everything, she laughed. "Believe me, there's not a shank here who doesn't know that."

"I'll win you back, Rose. Somehow, some way. You'll see."

She wiped the corners of her eyes and offered a shallow nod. For now, at least, Thomas didn't hold her admission against her, and she exhaled as he darted out the door.

Rose wasn't sure how long Thomas had been gone, but it was pitch dark when she finally lit her lantern. There was a strange pounding surrounding her that she couldn't quite place; it wasn't a knock at her door or her heart in her ears. She grabbed her light and opened her door.

A rush of damp, cool air billowed in along with the sound of a muffled pattering, like fingers drumming on a table. Rose set her lantern down on the stump outside her door and stepped into the night. She glanced up, finding only complete blackness as liquid bombs exploded across her face.

Rain.

Rose was convinced she'd never feel it again, save for a few choice drops in a vivid memory. She fancied she recalled other images of herself fleeing sudden showers in her childhood, ducking into nondescript alcoves or onto porches in some city she could not place, but that could have been her imagination.

In the distance, she heard the chorus of startled boys rushing into the Homestead with their beds, but Rose had no desire to leave. Water gathered at her hairline, pooled in the corners of her eyes, and trickled down the base of her neck. It saturated her clothes and tempered the heat in her chest. It revived her.

She pictured Thomas, his questing eyes, the constellation of fine moles stippling the hollows of his cheeks, the dark stubble on his chin that scratched her cheeks in the morning. His memory brought a wave of fondness now, not a rush of intensity as it once had. Rose felt guilty for not feeling sadder as their relationship ended. Their connection had once drove many of her choices in the Glade, and Rose was grateful for it, but she knew it was over, and as she stood there basking in the wet caress of the rain, it washed away their ending and ushered in a new beginning.

The soft squelching of footsteps along the muddy trail to her front door perked Rose's ears. She tilted her head forward and gasped as the water that had puddled across her face sluiced under her shirt's neckline. Her lantern struggled to cast its light through the shimmer of silver rain, but Rose could see everything she needed to. Minho stared back at her under an awning of sagging hair. His eyes flicked from her sodden curls to her bedraggled shirt.

"What are you doing here?" Rose asked when she found her voice at last. She nearly had to shout over percussive rain in the canopy.

Minho took a step closer so his voice was quieter, more sincere. "I heard Thomas back in the Homestead for the first time in weeks. I wanted to make sure you were okay."

She furrowed her brow. "Yeah, I'm okay."

"Oh. That's good."

Had he expected her to say something else?

He waited a minute, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot before he started to turn around. "Then I'll let you get back to bed. Good night, Doc."

"Minho!" Rose was shouting now, and it wasn't even about the rain. She didn't know what to say, but she knew she didn't want him to leave. He had come for her, and she couldn't let him go yet. He turned back around.

 _Say something, you idiot._

"It's raining."

 _Nailed it._

A stiff wind ushered in a fresh shower of droplets, shellacking Minho's white button-up to his chest. Rose shivered.

He squinted upward. No purple galaxies, no jade curtains tonight, just raw awakenings under smothering blackness.

"It never rains here," he replied numbly.

Rose glanced up at Minho, his face staring up into the dark crystals that fell from the sky. She steeled herself.

"It did once."

His head snapped to her. "What did you say?"

"I remember," she said softly as rain plastered chunky curls to the perimeter of face. Rose slowly closed the gap between them until her lantern felt as distant as a flickering pole star. They were adrift in the night on a turbulent sea stirred by Mother Nature and a not-so-forgotten past. "I remember what I did to you, everything I did."

Minho's chest heaved. "Everything? Even the last time?"

Rose nodded, her lips hanging open, catching fat pellets of heavy rain. She tasted the minerals of the earth and the freedom of the air. Minho watched her bottom lip, couldn't look away from it.

"I can understand now why you hate me," she said at last.

"I don't hate you, Rose. That's part of my problem." He shook his head vehemently, and crystalline shards scattered from the tips of his hair. "You kissed me like that—like you wanted me—and then you disappeared. Do you know how that felt? You were the only thing I could think about for months on end, and, for that one second, I thought maybe I wasn't imagining what I felt between us.

"But you never came back. I thought you forgot me or, worse, the Creators had killed you. Every day I waited to see you again, and every day I didn't, I hated this place even more for giving me you and then taking you away.

"And then one day you're in my Glade—just like that! Only you don't remember me but you remember Thomas. And now you're with one of my best friends. That's next level shucked up, Rose."

It was so much worse hearing the truth from Minho's mouth. Rosalind had hurt him so badly, and she had done it intentionally. Whatever her motives were, it didn't justify this horrible torment Minho had gone through. Rose wanted to apologize, to admit everything about the Directive and Rosalind's schemes, but the words she had planned and the words she said were two totally different things.

"I'm not with Thomas anymore."

Minho froze. His eyes stared off into the darkness. "That's why he…"

As much as Rose resented Rosalind, resented the things she had done to Minho, she felt the boldness of the other woman stirring beneath her skin, the damn-the-consequences spitfire who pined for another taste of the pretty boy's mouth. Fire raced into her veins despite the chill of the rain.

"That's why you're here, isn't it, Minho? To pick up where we left off?" Rose heard the flirty challenge in her voice, just enough cockiness to bring the Keeper of the Runners a few steps closer.

He hummed, a deep tremor that vibrated in his chest and in hers, too, reminding her of the panther she met moments after she was revived. He took a step closer, bringing them within a few feet of each other. She could see the darkness in his eyes accentuated by the smug twitch at their corners. Minho plucked a pasted tendril from her forehead and moved it back behind her ear. "You think a lot of yourself, don't you, Doc?"

"Tell me I'm wrong." Despite her best attempts to harness more of Rosalind's confidence, Rose's voice shook.

"You're wrong." Minho took one last step, her chest only an inch from his. He dragged his thumb across her bottom lip, wiping the rain free. "I want to go few steps further."

Minho held Rose's face in both hands and lowered his mouth onto hers. He smothered her lips at first, branding her as his once again so that this time she wouldn't forget. But soon he needed more of her, and he tilted her head back so that her bottom lip protruded. He attacked it mercilessly, sucking it so that his teeth grazed it.

Rose gasped into his mouth and was rewarded with the addition of Minho's questing tongue. This kiss was on a different level from their first one. Rose tasted the fire of his passion, the heat of his fervent breaths filling her up, the surge of the rain as it charged every nerve in her body, the anchor of the fetid earth reminding her that he was real, this was real.

They were elemental.

Minho drove her back until Rose's spine collided with the trunk of a tree, sending a cascade of fat drops into their sopping hair. Rose grunted, and Minho ground his body against her. Their clothes were so wet they felt more like a second skin, and she could feel how hard he was, not just his straining muscles but his straining manhood. Her hands gripped his waist and urged him even closer.

The rain was cold, but Rose had never felt so overheated, and she was soaked from head to toe, but it was nothing compared to the slickness coating her inner thighs. She was desire incarnate. She was wanton. She didn't care as long as she could have Minho.

He pulled back, and Rose groaned shamelessly. He smirked. So damn cocky, so damn handsome.

Minho ran his thumb again across her now swollen lip, his eyes carefully memorizing its progress. "You're almost as pretty as I am," he teased.

Rose's tongue peeped out to lick the taunting digit, and it was Minho's turn to groan.

"Tell me I'm not dreaming," he growled as his other fingers dug into her waist.

"If you are, don't wake up."

He dove back in for another kiss, Rose's hands massaging the wet skin at his neck and the glossy feathers of his hair. The rain cemented their bodies together the way they were supposed to fit. Minho was nestled between her parted legs, his soaked cargo pants a pitiful disguise for the hungry need that urged to bury itself in her.

Through heavy panting, Rose managed, "We should st—"

"Don't care," he replied, trying to silence her with his tongue.

"I just broke up—"

He nibbled her ear lobe.

"I'm not Rosalind," she gasped.

He pulled back just enough to level his fierce eyes with hers. "Shuck, you're more annoying than I am. I don't want you to be Rosalind—I want you to be _mine,_ Rose _._ If this isn't okay, if you don't want me as much as I want you, you have to tell me right now because I _will not_ stop once I start."

There had been many moments like this between the two of them since Rose had arrived, moments of quaking lust masquerading as witty banter and barely restrained flirtatious teasing, turning points where she had instead chosen to turn back rather than admit that she felt something powerful for a man who both provoked her and tempted her. This was another turning point, but as Minho's lips licked the droplets of water gathered under her jaw, Rose knew she could never turn back again.

"Don't stop," she commanded as her teeth clipped his earlobe.

Minho pulled back, and Rose nearly cried out in desperation before those powerful arms scooped under her knees and cradled her back as he hefted her up, his biceps straining magnificently under the drenched manacles of his shirt sleeves. Rose secured her hands around his neck, pulling him down for one more feverish kiss as he kicked open the door to her room and, once inside, kicked it emphatically shut.

* * *

 _A/N: First of all, you should know the song at the masthead inspired more than just this kiss scene, but the ENTIRE book. I built everything around this one moment, so Jero is responsible for everything—a Creator in his own right. Go show him the love he deserves—he's a damn Korean national treasure._

 _Also, spoiler: Have I got a Valentine's Day present coming up for you all, but you're going to need to remember my Wattpad account *wink wink*…_

 _Finally, this chapter is dedicated to the only kiss I ever had in the rain. It remains the best kiss of my life. Don't be afraid to get a little wet, my friends._


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter Twenty-One**

 _Sam Tinnesz – Play With Fire_

 _Bonus jam: Dean – Put My Hands on You_

 _A/N: Real quick—THANK YOU FOR ALL THE READS AND COMMENTS. I know this community is pretty quiet here, so I really appreciate the time you took to show this story any love._

 _Now, as the real thank you, time to get you in the mood for VDay, my little Valentines. Just skip this whole thing if you ain't into the pr0nz. This is all I can post of this chapter here lol._

* * *

They stood just inside the door, lips locked as Rose was draped over Minho's arms. When they finally came up panting for air, Minho spared a second to look around.

"That slinthead Gally, he's more eyebrows than brains. He never made you a bed?" Minho grumbled as he reluctantly placed Rose on her feet.

"You're such a spoiled princess. You afraid of getting a little dirty?"

Minho's eyes whipped back to her as he pinned her against her wall. One of his hands tilted Rose's head to the side to expose a long swath of her pale throat. He planted his lips there and sucked deeply as Rose gasped, her hips bucking against his.

"I dare you to say that once I'm buried deep inside you. I don't need a bed to take you, Rose," Minho grumbled indignantly as he drew another taste of her, this time at her collar.

**Continues on Wattpad


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter Twenty-Two**

 _Monsta X – Oi_

 _A/N: Just a quick PSA to say that I am deeply in love with Monsta X. Please—_ please _—go listen to them, at the very least "Beautiful" (favorite song) and "Rush" (favorite video—hello, reverse harem!). DO EET._

* * *

Deep in the gray wall, Rose uncovered another diamond, huge and polished and sparkling despite the fact that it was still half-encased in gray stone. It had even more facets than the first, and if the memory of her mother was any indicator, this would be Rose's most precious finding yet.

But as she prepared the last scoop around the gem, the skeletal hands found Rose, and this time they were relentless, tugging at her pants and scratching at her shoes. She chucked cubes of gray matter to appease them, but the most delicate hand would no longer be diverted. It was coming for her, and no amount of Rose's screams or thrashing could stop it. Its waxy, gangrenous digits groped for her, the phalanges puncturing the skin at Rose's knee to hoist itself further out from under the wall. Rose could see the shoulder now, a once elegant swell marred by a bite-sized gouge with a tooth still embedded in the flesh, and her blood chilled.

While the first hand pulled Rose down, its bony tips tenterhooks in her knee, the remaining two pairs of hands restrained the rest of her limbs with the strength of steel cables. Below the waves, the white water churned with the etherealness of dry ice. Rose could see the hands, the forearms, even a bit of chests and the curves of necks, but nothing beyond. The hands pulled purposefully, unceasingly. They weren't just dragging her down—they were pulling her forward. Though the water was opaque, Rose could see the tremendous shadow of the wall looming overhead. They were taking her under it.

Fear gripped Rose's heart and constricted her lungs. Though she'd been tunneling through the wall for ages, she never expected to get this far, and, more importantly, she realized she never wanted to. What lay beyond was nearly as terrifying as what lay underneath.

Rose kicked with all of her might. She jackhammered her arms and twisted her torso, undulating like a mermaid caught in a net. The force of the water worked against her, but she had to be stronger. She had to break free. Her fingers pried the baby's hands from her first, working one supple digit at a time until chunks of waterlogged skin sloughed off and the tiny hands floated down into the immersive blackness.

The woman's hands were next. Rose tried to quiet the flop of her stomach as her fingers whittled back the little clips of bone, but these were much stronger than the baby's fingers, and her air supply was dwindling with her strength. With one final wrench, the last phalange released along with the muddled snap of bone, the woman's gnawed fingertip drifting down into the darkness, too.

Only the strongest hands were left. An eagle tattoo on the man's spidery forearm raged at Rose with its claws out and wings flapping full-strength, but without the aid of the other hands to hold her back, she gained more control of her own limbs and kicked harder and faster than she had thought possible. The more she kicked, the more the iron grip of the eagle loosened. With one final flip of her foot, Rose pushed off, hurtling free and fast toward the sky.

When Rose broke the surface, gasping for air as a newborn babe, she realized she was in a different world.

* * *

"Damnit!"

Chancellor Ava Paige's hands slammed against the desk, the sharp pound of her defeat reverberating off the concrete walls and making the rest of the team wince.

"We've lost Subject A18," said Dr. Thorne in a clinical tone.

"How long was he in there?" Ava croaked, her forehead now cradled in her reddening palms.

Dr. Thorne glanced down at her chart. "One year, four months, sixteen days."

Ava released a long sigh. "A18 was a valuable Subject. So much promise, especially during initial testing, and yet… I don't understand it. Progress has stagnated with both Groups. Almost two years without any great leaps in understanding other than the initial readings. No matter how much we push our Subjects, their patterns repeat without major spike or change."

"The addition of Subject A4 produced some interesting results initially, and A2 is already turning everything on its head, just as you predicted. Things are progressing more rapidly now, Chancellor," Dr. Espina offered.

But Ava shook her head firmly, even if it was with the smallest addition of a smile. "There was never any doubt when it came to Thomas, was there? But it's not enough. The Subjects have become used to the Trial."

Dr. Thorne lifted a thick report, paged through it cursorily, and then passed it to her partner as though Dr. Espina could find something to contradict the Chancellor's statement. Eventually, they closed the book, though Dr. Thorne's eyes were no less confident behind her lenses.

"The data do seem to substantiate stagnation, but neither Group has solved the Maze, and that was always critical to their development. I'm sure with a little time and perhaps a few more," she paused, "incentives—"

"We could leave the Doors open," suggested a heavily wrinkled woman near the head of the table.

"Maybe we should try turning off their weekly supplies? Blight their crops?" volunteered another interchangeable white-coated man at the table. "Stress their most basic needs to the limit and force them to go looking elsewhere to survive."

"Isn't that what all of humanity has been forced to do for years now, Dr. Waridi? That hasn't solved the Flare," quipped a man in red glasses.

Ava pinched the bridge of her nose and took a long, steady breath as the room silenced. The Chancellor lifted her head and craned it around the space crowded with puffy, sallow faces that hadn't felt the kiss of the sun in years. "Rosalind, what do you think? Your understanding of the human condition is second to none."

A young redhead stepped from the outer orbit of the scientists into the inner circle. It didn't matter that she was decades younger than the vast majority of her colleagues, she felt as much a part of this group as the rest of them because she had just as much at stake.

"Humans are the most resilient creatures on the planet," Rosalind began, keeping her chin high as more and more critical eyes turned to her, "the only ones to carve out an existence in every environment on Earth. The Subjects of the Maze Trials are proving no different. They have established a home in an inhospitable place, and life has become commonplace, no different than anyone still surviving out here in the real world. We need to disrupt their routine in a way they don't expect. They're used to violence and hardship. Perhaps it's time to introduce an alternative stimuli, an outlier."

Dr. Thorne offered the young redhead her most withering look, the same one Rosalind remembered from her years under the scientist's strict tutelage. "Not this again. The key to solving the Flare is in the Killzone, Rosalind, always has been. Why do you think we've been mapping it so stringently for years?"

Dr. Thorne's resentment was unmistakable. She had hated every experiment Rosalind had ever proposed, always scrawling her favorite adages in the margins of her student's papers: "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go" or "Nothing ventured, nothing gained" or Rosalind's least favorite, "You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs." As if kids like Rosalind—WICKED's children—were ingredients in some diabolical recipe.

But the redhead had never cowered before the might of Dr. Thorne's peerless gaze, and she wouldn't start now. Few people knew violence or the Flare as intimately as Rosalind did, and no amount of indoctrination from any one of WICKED's brilliant, albeit tunnel-visioned, scientists had ever been able to sway her otherwise.

With a quizzical cock of her head, Rosalind adopted her most patronizing tone for the white-haired scientist. "Is it? We are controlled by more than fear, Dr. Thorne, as you well know, and the Killzone covers more than Fight or Flight. I think that has been proven time and again by the Subjects' willingness to sacrifice themselves for others, for the greater good of their Group. That's not fear or self-preservation; that's love and compassion, and it can all be found in the Killzone, too. We've just been too near-sighted to explore it."

An unhappy murmur broke out among her dissidents, but the redhead took little heed, sparing only an afterthought to raise a hand to her throat and thumb the scar. Rosalind moved toward the wall of monitors at the head of the laboratory. She paused a moment to open a folder of images she had spent months meticulously selecting as she prepared her case. She cast a few graphs and snapshots of Light Boxes onto some of the monitors and paired them with faces of young men she had long ago committed to memory.

"Look at the spikes of the Subjects who have sacrificed themselves. In their final moments, their levels change— _their_ levels, not those of the Subjects who die alone, as you can see over here. But more than that, look at their faces."

Rosalind replaced those images of grisly deaths with a collage of surveillance photos of other teenage faces. Some were twisted in horror, others in fright, but amongst them, two stood out, faces that could only be described as relieved. Their softened eyes, slackened cheeks, even an approving nod from one of the boys, had haunted Rosalind on many late nights, and she wanted it to haunt her colleagues, too. She needed them to see—needed them to understand.

"Now look at the Light Boxes of the Subjects who sacrificed themselves as well as those of the Subjects who were saved by their sacrifice. Those Subjects who were saved, their physiology is permanently altered. _Permanently_. In subsequent tests, their Killzones reacted differently than their counterparts. They have been changed by their friend's love."

"What are you proposing, Rosalind?" demanded a middle-aged man with slender teardrop eyes and a face as perfectly round as an orange.

"I'll get to that in a minute, Dr. Mei. Allow me one last point, if you please." The redhead added six photographs of a handsome Korean boy to the monitors.

"Look at these photos of Subject A7, taken over the course of the last twenty plus months. I've arranged them from first moments in the Maze, to first Griever sighting, to first death of a friend, to another death, and another, and finally, to his first night in the Maze. Sure, the first few reactions are strong, and they provoked equally strong results in A7's Light Box, but by the last few, it's all become, to use my mentor's favorite word, _perfunctory_." Rosalind savored a glance at Dr. Thorne, who scowled at her over the rim of her glasses, before returning to her presentation. "Even at moments of greatest stress—a night spent in the Maze—we see shades of fear, excitement even, but ultimately acceptance. A7's readings, just like every Subject in Group A, had plateaued."

"Had?" the wrinkled scientist repeated.

Rosalind brought up three more snapshots of the same almond-eyed boy, but the contrast between these and her first set was stark. His expressions were so alive, so evocative, Rosalind even heard a couple of arrested gasps in the back of the room. With the addition at A7's corresponding Light Box readings—as vibrant as a supernova—the gasps escalated.

One look at A7's full lips, agape at the flap of red dress at the edge of the frame, and Rosalind was back in that Maze with him, her mouth smothering his. But there would be no pictures of their kiss up there. Rosalind had escaped the beetle blades just in time—she had checked the archives to be sure, though she had saved one picture of A7 panting and stunned in the corner for her private collection. Nor could she share the image of his Light Box that day erupting in purple sunbursts without explanation, which she refused to give.

"These were taken when I was overtly shadowing A7 in the Maze, with the Chancellor's discretion, of course. Though I never spoke to my Target Subject, I did sing and smile and engage him in competitive challenges. These preliminary exposures to my alternative stimuli produced markers in the Killzone comparable to the peak of the average Subject responding to the usual Trial stimuli. I think we can all agree that that is, at the very least, worth investigating.

"My research and full findings on Stage One of my proposal, The XX Protocol, are incorporated here for you, including detailed directives for the remaining three stages. If you allow me to conduct my experiment as outlined, I posit we could have an answer to the Flare within six months' time."

Dr. Thorne pursed her lips as thunderous disbelief shook the other scientists. After the Chancellor regained control, the tight-lipped Dr. Thorne condescended, "That's a bold statement, Rosalind. You must have substantial findings after only completing one phase of your little experiment."

While Rosalind had spent months of her life exclusively on the development of her Protocol and many more exhaustive weeks labeling, analyzing, and cataloging every scrap of data to back it up, for her, all it took was one stumble of a cocksure boy in the wake of her flirtatious smile to know that she had discovered something breathtaking.

But Rosalind couldn't say that to a group of stuff-shirts if she expected to be taken seriously, so instead she simpered to her harshest critic. "My preliminary findings will speak for themselves. Our understanding of the Killzone to date has been restrictive, and I aim to challenge that. After all, you can't understand how a clock works by only examining one gear."

The room silenced, and Rosalind could practically hear a collective "hm". Even Dr. Thorne made no reply. Ava, on the other hand, offered the redhead a discreet half-smile.

Rosalind made one final push forward, emboldened by their interest. She brushed her stripe of white curls from her face and said, "As my Protocol asserts, we need a new Subject, one with different parameters entirely from the control group, in this case Group A, one who can provoke the Subjects on a more primitive level. We need to make them feel more, not less."

"And whom do you propose as the new stimuli?" Dr. Espina said.

Rosalind blinked. "I would have thought that would be obvious."

Dr. Mei, however, did not seem to agree. "What about Subject A1? We've been looking for an excuse to enter her into the Trials."

"Teresa? No!" Rosalind blurted and immediately realized her folly.

With men and women like these, Rosalind needed less emotion, not more. If Ava had taught her anything in this last year, much of this was all posturing—big words, cool composure, confident body language. For these scientists, they'd been at their mission so long, other people had ceased to be people at all and had only become Subjects. Relationships were formed under a microscope, and the metaphorical heart was as dissectible as the literal one.

Rosalind thought of her dear friend, Teresa, the only one she had in WICKED's headquarters, and of the bond they had forged in the last year through their work and their messed-up families. She pictured that raven-haired beauty waking up defenseless in a stone prison populated by strange men who couldn't remember a woman, much less a flawless one. Besides, what her Protocol asked of a woman, Rosalind wouldn't visit it on anyone unwilling or uninformed. She thought of everything Teresa could yet accomplish with WICKED and thought of that being taken away from her, most likely for good, if she even survived Directive 2.1. She couldn't let WICKED take her—she wouldn't.

More controlled this time, Rosalind continued, "Subject A1 is not necessary at this point. We have one other avenue to explore."

Ava scrutinized her. Her words were measured and firm. "As you know, Rosalind, I have thoroughly reviewed your proposal. Your findings are as provocative as they are thorough, especially for one so young, and they are certainly worthy of exploration, but I need to be sure you fully understand what you are proposing."

"Better than anyone."

"I can't subject you to any less of a Trial than I can the rest of them. It would undermine the authenticity of the experiment."

"I would never ask you to."

There was a brief stalemate as the two women locked eyes until a current of understanding could pass between them. Rosalind gave the curtest of nods, and the Chancellor pursed her lips.

"Then it's decided. Pending a discussion of logistics, we will implement The XX Protocol as soon as possible. Thank you for your service and dedication to our mission, Rosalind. We wish you all the best in your endeavor, and remember: WICKED is good."

With the meeting adjourned, Rosalind spent several minutes fielding questions from her colleagues as they tried to lampoon her theories, but she wouldn't let it get to her. She had known all along that a bunch of stodgy, middle-aged scientists would resent her proposal if for no other reason than her age and her Immune designation.

At eighteen, Rosalind was hardly an expert in anything, but she knew people. She understood what they wanted and, more importantly, she understood what they would do to get it. By the time she was seven, she had had a crash course in human behavior thanks to her grizzled caretaker, Mr. Sunshine, and by the time WICKED picked her up at age eleven, she could have written a textbook on it. Every flick of a wrist, every bat of an eyelash, and every hesitant breath was a landmark on the road map to the center of a person's head and heart, and Rosalind held a universal atlas. Five minutes together was all it took for her to decipher a person's mannerisms in order to figure out who they were and what they wanted from her.

Demeaning questions, hard stares, barely-concealed wolfish smiles. Her colleagues were trying to intimidate her, to remind her of her place on the totem pole, to get her to leave the scientific work to the real scientists. But Rosalind remained unflappable because she knew one secret, immutable truth.

Control was power.

The more she lost control, the more power they could take from her. Rosalind had spent half of her childhood feeling powerless before she learned that what most of these tyrants wanted was to break her. She'd been broken, shattered actually, but over a decade, Rosalind had put herself back together. She was unbreakable now.

Dr. Mei needled her research, tamping his stubby thumb at one of her Directives. "See here, Rosalind, what you propose is no good. How could flower petals in the Maze provoke any sort of worthwhile response? It is all nonsense. What you need is—"

"I appreciate your advice, Dr. Mei, and I believe Chancellor Paige will look forward to your review of Directive 2.3 after its implementation." Rosalind called forth her most natural smile she'd perfected during her street urchin days and relished the creased lips the scientist offered.

Finally free from her last critic, Rosalind darted for her room and, once safely inside, sagged against her mirror. She rolled her head on the glass, staring into her own eyes. Her pupils were large, dark with the congealed blood of old wounds. She had been a pale, freckled thing once, but that was long ago, before the world had turned to ash and sand, before her hair had turned white, before she'd been gifted her scar. Years on the streets under the ruthless sun had given her a more golden hue that had washed out to a warm ivory in the tunnels of WICKED.

Rosalind's heart hammered as powerfully as if she had just finished another pursuit in the Maze. WICKED had listened, albeit grudgingly, but it had agreed. She was punching her ticket out of this hell-hole, and while she was only destined for another one, at least it would be a different hell-hole.

And her memories would be gone. The new Rosalind would cry for them, miss them, struggle to get them back. But, with luck, she would never know what Rosalind knew: her memories were a curse. Everything that had happened to her then, everything that was happening to her now—she didn't want any of it anymore. It was already more than she could bear. The scientist in her wondered who she would be when she was stripped down to her barest parts.

Before she had ever stepped foot in that Maze, Rosalind had already planned every moment of her Protocol down to the most minute detail. Even her ensemble for her Phase One Directives had been carefully chosen: a dress to surprise; red—a color that wasn't readily found in Group A—to catch the eye; a short skirt to draw the eye further down; a pretty sweetheart neckline to draw the eye back up; bright red lipstick to imprint on his memory. Of course, there was no escaping a pair of practical sneakers and runner's shorts underneath the skirt, but that would never have mattered, not to him.

Every Directive had been crafted with the same deliberate care to elicit precise reactions down the line, to herd the Subjects in a specific direction at a controlled momentum, to push every boundary until there were none left to push. At the conclusion of Rosalind's experiment, every recess of her mind and the others' would be plumbed. If there was a cure for the Flare inside their heads, her Protocol would find it.

Rosalind had always planned to become Subject XX, tailoring the experiment to her own parameters, not that she had ever let that on to the Chancellor. Ava probably suspected—she wouldn't be the Chancellor if she weren't that clever—but she hadn't fought Rosalind on it. Ava trusted her and, more importantly, believed in the early results the Protocol had collected. The Chancellor had even edited some of the Directives to improve efficacy. This could work, it had to work.

Just then, there was a quick double-tap knock on Rosalind's door. Ava entered without waiting for an answer and found the young redhead leaning against the wall with her hand over her throat.

"You were brilliant in there," the Chancellor said with a voice as proud as Rosalind's own mother.

"I was terrified."

"It didn't show. You even changed my mind, and that's no small thing."

Rosalind rolled her eyes and grinned. "I changed it months ago."

But Ava arched one pencil-thin brow, creasing the fine lines along her forehead. "There is a difference between mentoring you and being convinced by you. You, Rosalind, have been one of WICKED's greatest acquisitions, with such promise, such genius in you—I have always believed that about you—but it wasn't until I saw you up there today, thundering away at your critics, that I knew you had what it took to implement your Protocol."

Ava reached out her hand and cupped Rosalind's cheek. The Chancellor's skin was icy cold and brittle, but somewhere below that, it held the reassuring warmth of a mother. "I just lost Thomas, and now I'm going to lose you, too."

At the mention of Thomas' name, Rosalind's heart bobbed like a buoy in the stormy seas inside her.

"I'll take care of him, Ava," she assured, underscoring it with the Chancellor's first name as she was allowed to do only when they were alone.

"I'm sure you will. You always have." Ava stroked Rosalind's cheekbone as she continued to scrutinize the girl's face. "But why do I get the feeling that you're doing this experiment for very different reasons than the ones you proposed?"

"Would it matter if I was? It'll all be erased with the Swipe anyway." Deflecting as best as possible, Rose added, "Monitor everything this time. Everything. Not just the Killzone, but the temporal lobe, frontal lobe, prefrontal cortex—"

"I understand, my dear. Everything," Ava said, though whether she referred to the procedure or to something grander, Rosalind couldn't tell. Ava soothed Rosalind's cheek again, her eyes soft at the corners and her lips tipped up in the slightest of smiles. "Your purpose is so much greater than your mother could have ever imagined."

Rosalind winced and turned away. She did her best to keep her voice as clinical as the other scientists' as she said, "When can I expect to go in?"

The Chancellor sighed. "We can arrange for the day after tomorrow. That will give you time to close out your reports and say your goodbyes."

"I'd rather do it tomorrow."

"Tomorrow! Rosalind, you need time to—"

"What's the point? I won't remember any goodbyes anyway. Besides, they never make anyone feel any better, believe me. Every moment we wait, another family is ripped apart by the Flare, and they won't get any goodbyes."

Neither of them could argue this point.

Rosalind handed the Chancellor another copy of her Protocol. "Please do everything I've outlined in here just as I instruct. If you don't start seeing the results you want by Phase Three, you can feel free to do whatever stupid idea Dr. Thorne wants to do."

"Rosalind," Ava scolded, but it was with a hint of a smile. Professionalism be damned at this point.

"But you won't need to. I'm telling you the secret to curing the Flare is in there with them. I'll unlock it, but I may hate you for it. I won't be me anymore, Ava, and I won't understand what we're trying to do anymore."

"I know, dearest Rosa, I know. But I have faith in you. No one understands people like you, a gift from your mother I suppose."

"My father, actually," Rosalind replied bitterly, stroking her scar.

There was another knock at the door, this one feverish, and before Rosalind called in her other guest, she gave the Chancellor a quick hug and whispered a thank you. Tomorrow, they might all go down rightly in the annals of history as monsters, but for now, they were a surrogate mother and a wayward daughter sparing one last moment for tenderness before the rest of the world came crashing down.

As Ava left, Teresa entered, sparing a polite nod for her boss and a jubilant grin for her friend. Tendrils of her wild, coal-black hair tickled Rosalind's nose as she embraced her eagerly. "I just heard from Dr. Waridi that you killed it! Congratulations on your Protocol, Roz! I'm so proud of you. You earned it. You're going to change the world, I know it."

"I couldn't have done it without you, Reese."

"Oh, please, the only thing I did was find your dress. I just wish you didn't have to go so soon."

Rosalind didn't bother mentioning that soon now meant tomorrow, but as she had told the Chancellor, a sloppy goodbye didn't do anyone any good.

The two sat side-by-side on her bed, Rosalind's head on Teresa's shoulder. "I wanna pretend that it's all for the greater good, that the faster I get in there, the faster I'll find the Cure. But I'd be lying. Is it weird to say that I'm going to miss them?"

"Your family, you mean?" her friend interpreted.

Rosalind nodded. "I've spent the last decade trying to forget them, or at least the things my dad did, and now that I get to, I'm scared to let them go. I feel like I'm betraying my mom and Rosie."

Teresa nuzzled her cheek against the crown of Rosalind's head. "Your mom would be so proud of you."

"Then why don't I feel proud of me?"

Teresa added an arm around her friend's shoulder and pulled her tighter. "Don't doubt yourself, girl. I believe in you more than I believe in anyone else here, maybe even Tom, which is why I'll be helping out when they implant your Swipe."

"Reese—"

But her friend pulled back so she could pierce Rosalind with her glacier blue eyes. "I know you've said you don't want any of your memories, but you shouldn't go in there blank. It's not safe."

"I'll have my Directives," Rosalind protested.

Teresa scowled. "You won't remember them, Roz. WICKED's going to build a locked wall in your head, but I'll leave you a key, okay?"

"I wish you wouldn't. You know I don't want them."

"Yeah, but you'll be in there unarmed," her friend insisted.

Rosalind scoffed. "No one's ever labeled me defenseless."

"Not what I mean. It's up to you if you use it or not, but if I know you, you won't be able to help yourself. And one day you'll remember this moment, and you'll wake up and say, 'Damn Reese,' but you'll thank me later. And when you find Tom, and I know you two always will, let him know I miss him."

Rosalind nodded numbly. Teresa was too generous with her. She didn't deserve her loyalty or her affection. Her best friend was in love with the boy Rosalind had been dating for a year, and even if Rosalind hadn't known it when she and Thomas first hooked up, she had figured it out the first time she saw the two of them together. Teresa had never said a word about it, but Rosalind would be lying to herself if she didn't admit that her guilt was a large part of the reason she'd been distancing herself from Thomas recently. Well, that and her other pressing secret…

After a long moment, Teresa said, "You sure about this?"

"The only thing I'm sure about is that I can't let them begin the End."

"You're worried about me and Tom," Teresa translated. "You shouldn't. This is what we've been training for. Between the three of us, we'll get Group A to complete the Maze one way or another."

"But at what cost? More people will die. They were your friends, Reese. They still are, even if they don't remember you. Some of them won't make it out, and I can't live with that."

Rosalind had always envied the fact that Teresa had friends. From her arrival, Rosalind had been segregated from the other kids, for what ultimate purpose, she might never know. Her only interactions were with doctors and scientists, but on occasion, as she got older, she was allowed to watch the other kids on the monitors, though that was usually when they were being disciplined in the Crank Pits or when WICKED tested the Grievers on them...

Even through those horrors, a small, sick part of Rosalind envied them. What did she have but a concrete room, a handful of white-coated automatons to feed and test her every day, and a sea full of nightmares sloshing in her skull? At least they had each other. It was only after the Trials had begun that Rosalind had been allowed to meet Thomas and Teresa. Five years in near total isolation with one precious fluke in the middle to save her from total hysteria.

"Oh, I get it. You're worried about Minho."

God, how could this girl read her so well? That was Rosalind's job, and yet her friend could always manage to cut through her bullshit with the efficiency of a chainsaw. But then she supposed anyone who could build a gigantic maze would probably be pretty good at navigating the one in someone else's head.

Rosalind couldn't help the way her breath caught. Other than in her own head, she hadn't heard anybody say his name in two years. He had been rigidly and firmly fixed as Subject A7 since the day he had entered the Trials. Hell, Rosalind had done her best to reinforce his new moniker every day just to remind herself this was all part of an experiment, one of her own making no less.

"It's funny how that stuff works," Teresa added.

"What stuff?"

"The heart."

"Teresa…"

"Don't bother trying to explain it. We don't get a choice about it anyway. Besides, I know what it's like to fall in love." Teresa's voice carried a wistful edge as she stared through the miles of concrete walls into a green Glade at a handsome young man with eyes like warm syrup and lips just as sweet.

"It's really not like that, Reese. I'm not in love with him—he's my Subject. Besides, you can't be in love with somebody you've only met once."

Teresa's attention snapped back to Rosalind so she could squint at her. "Don't make excuses for how you feel."

"I'm not—no," Rosalind stuttered.

Teresa sighed. "How can you be this good at understanding other people and so bad at understanding yourself?"

"Whatever. A7's just a part in my experiment."

"Don't. You sound like them."

Rosalind thought of the room full of apathetic scientists who were so quick to send boys off to their deaths, and she shot up from the bed to pace the room. Suddenly, her legs were very, very restless. "Why are you lecturing me, Reese? You designed the Maze. We're the same."

Teresa folded her hands in her lap and studied the way her fingers pinched her skin between them. "We're not, Roz. You're better than I am. I've been labeled The Betrayer, for God's sake. And I was okay with that because it meant I could save the world, no matter the cost. But now you have a chance to save it without anyone else dying, and I have to live with the fact that I was okay sacrificing my friends when there were always other options. You _need_ to be better than I am, Roz, so don't pretend you don't feel what you feel. It's better than feeling nothing at all."

"Reese, I—"

"So that's why I'm going to help you," Teresa added, brushing away the dark mood with a brilliant smile, "because if you can save them, maybe you can save me from myself."

Rosalind raced over to the bed and plowed into her friend so hard she knocked Teresa on her back. She smothered her with a hug, maybe their last one ever. She couldn't bring herself to say goodbye, so instead she said, "If Rosie had grown up, I would have wanted her to be like you."

When Rosalind pulled back, she found crystal tears dripping from the glacial waters in Teresa's eyes. "You know I love you, Roz."

"Love you, too."

With Teresa gone, Rosalind had one last night to say goodbye to her entire life.

She pulled out a well-loved case from under her bed and snapped open the protesting latches. Inside was the gleaming spruce beauty that she knew as well as her own skin. It was the only thing Rosalind still had of her childhood, but she would have to let it go the same as every memory.

Gingerly, she pulled the instrument from its velvet lining and cradled it as she would a baby. She ran her hand over the names engraved in the metal. _Bridget_. _Daideó_. Rosalind had given up her true name seven years ago without much regret, but she would regret giving up her daideó.

She pictured his weather-beaten face with the multitude of cracks like mud baked in the sun. She pictured his eyes, an identical match for her own rugged gray-blue portholes that churned "like the Irish Sea in a gale," as he had often said. She pictured his white hair, a snow-capped peak on a mountain of a man, and the matching tufts of hair in his ears that always tickled his drooping lobes.

"Fiddling's in your blood, Bridget," he had said in his warm Irish cadence. "My daideó taught me, your mam's daideó taught her, and now I will do the same for you. When you play, you call to your family, those that came before you and those who will come after. You must promise your Daideó you will practice as often as you can so that we can hear you wherever you are and dance a mighty reel."

Bridget had never forgotten that promise and neither had Rosalind. She placed the chin guard in its familiar nook so she could play one last song for her family—her swan song. It wasn't as clean and precise as the jigs and reels she had once played because she was making this one up as she went, but as her bow sawed over the strings, just as her daideó had promised, she could feel her family there, especially her mother. And by the time she reached what would have been her mother's favorite whistles, Rosalind was sobbing and heartbroken and resolute that no other family would suffer what she had, no matter the costs to her.

* * *

 _A/N: So, the tone may have seemed a little different here, but hopefully you can see why since Rosalind was a different person than Rose. Lot of backstory here with more to come in future chapters. Back to your regularly scheduled bangin' chap next (another mostly Wattpad chappie)._


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter Twenty-Three**

 _7ane – DUI (ft. PENOMECO)_

 _Bonus sexy time jam: Joo Young – Lucy (ft. Chancellor)_

 _A/N: Finished elsewhere because, uh, reasons. I gots no shame._

 _(Also, thank you, Guest, for your incisive review. I would PM you but... Just wanted to say that I'm glad you noticed the shift in tone and style. It was meant to be reflective of Rose finding herself again in a new and overwhelming world, and as she changes, so does her style. So the real question remains—who is she about to become? By the end, hopefully it all comes full-circle. Thank you for reading in both places and for taking the time to review! And hooray for Kpop! As for smut—TIME FOR MORE.)_

* * *

 _Damn Reese._

Rose laid there in the damp early morning air feeling beautiful and ashamed and more exposed than even her nakedness could make her feel.

She pictured the version of herself in her memory. Rosalind felt taller, older, and more beautiful than Rose had ever considered herself. The redhead in her mind was confident and brilliant, fierce to behold and imposing to challenge, and yet underneath that, she was almost as fragile as Rose.

Rose knew so much more about herself now than she ever had. Her name wasn't even Rosalind. She had a family, but they were probably all dead—mother, father, grandfather, and sister Rosie.

Somewhere behind the wall in her mind, the memories rattled.

Rose remembered Ava now, Teresa, too. Had they been watching her this whole time? Rosalind had loved them, so they couldn't be the monsters Rose had been picturing for all these months, could they? But Cat's death had yet to fade from the forefront of her mind along with the sounds of her own screams as she begged WICKED for help and received none. Rosalind had always thought Ava and Teresa were different, but if Ava was the Chancellor, then surely she could have delivered life-saving supplies if she wanted. She hadn't.

All of these revelations were enough to make Rose's head spin, but nothing compared to the XX Protocol. Rosalind had orchestrated all of it—all of it—even her own presence here. And now, as Rose looked to the bare-skinned boy beside her, her heart ached at her treachery. Even if Rosalind had felt something genuine for him, it was all for an ulterior motive and Rose couldn't tell with certainty if what she was feeling had been planted in her own head as well.

Minho cared for her, and despite everything she had always believed, he _liked_ her. But Rose now knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that she had forced him to think that way—she had forced them all to care about her. Hell, Rosalind had designed the whole selfish thing for the sole purpose of seducing Minho. Did he actually even like Rose or did he like Rosalind? Were they the same? It didn't feel like it, and honestly, Rose didn't want them to be.

Soul-crushing existential crisis aside, something even greater loomed in her heart. Rose understood her experiment now. She also understood that, for better or worse, she had just brought it to its culmination. There was only one Directive left and she had to complete it. The Flare was still out there ravaging the world while she played house in their little oasis. How long could their invisible safety net really last? How long before the virus invaded the Glade and found those precious few boys here who weren't Immune? That couldn't happen—she wouldn't let it.

Rose knew she had to get out of here, and in good conscience, it would be better for everyone if she did it immediately. But Minho was irresistible. In the waning moonlight of the tender morning, even his skin glowed. The blanket had slouched to his waist, leaving his torso bare as he curled on his side. She should really leave, but he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

It had taken Rose months and the memories of a woman she no longer was to understand how much more complicated her feelings were than just hormones. Minho was rough and tender, arrogant and thoughtful, flawed and perfect all at the same time. Somehow, for every question about herself, he seemed to be the answer.

Which was why her decision was about to hurt a whole hell of lot more.

But it wasn't yet time for that. She could steal a few more minutes for their doomed love affair.

 _Don't be stupid, Rose. Don't._

Stupider than already sleeping with him?

 _Didn't know then what you know now_ , she argued with herself. _I'll never forgive you. They'll never forgive you._ He'll _never forgive you. Don't do it. You'll only make things worse._

But Rose's hand had a mind of its own, and it traveled up from his navel over the smooth dunes of his abdomen and up his neck until they finally brushed over his lips. Minho's eyes fluttered open and immediately found hers.

"That was the best night sleep I can remember."

"You didn't even sleep the whole night," Rose retorted. It was easier to argue than accept Minho's intimacy—another brutal reminder of her deceptions.

But Minho would not be rebuffed. Even in the darkness, his eyes were earnest. "How can I with the world's most beautiful woman next to me?"

She was naked next to a naked man who had just spent the night ravishing her, and yet it was his words that made Rose blush. She hid her face behind a mass of thick curls and busied her fingers with every ridge of his muscles, every swell of his hips and ass.

"You keep running your hand over me like that, and I'm not going to be responsible for the consequences," Minho mumbled through a sly smile.

His fingertips traced under Rose's jaw line as he guided her face towards his, but she pulled to the side at the last second. "Don't. I have morning breath."

"Shuck, woman, you think of the weirdest klunk. I don't care about that as long as your lips are on mine."

But if Rose kissed him now, she would reveal everything. She was already being selfish, and she couldn't add any more salt in the wound.

* * *

 _A/N: Continued on Wattpad…_


	24. Chapter 24

**Chapter Twenty-Four**

 _Charli Taft – Pieces_

"Morning, you gorgeous shanks," Minho said as he slid onto their usual bench, a huge smile splitting his face. "How 'bout that rain, huh?"

The whole table gawked at him except Alby who scowled.

"What's wrong with Minho?" Chuck whispered too loudly to Thomas.

The Keeper of the Runners flexed his arms, his smile never leaving his face. "Me? I'm perfect. Great day to be alive."

"You're bloody scaring the little one," Newt scolded the once-again perfectly-coiffed Minho.

Rose joined in with the rest of the table to squint at the Runner, who returned each blistering gaze with an impervious grin. "No reason to worry, little shank. I got a good feeling about today, what can I say?"

 _Okay, it's now or never_ , she steeled herself as she inhaled deeply.

"Glad to hear you're in such a good mood," Rose began gingerly, "because I was thinking maybe I could try Running with Omar or Renato or one of the other Runners, you know, since my apprenticeship is kind of coming to a close."

Instantly, Minho's unflappable joy flapped. His brows knit into a sharp line and his voice dropped several octaves. "Omar? Are you serious? Is she serious? The she-shank's talking complete nonsense again. Clint! I think Dr. Shuckette has been taking too many medicinal herbs."

Rose had expected a scene, but she hadn't expected Minho to rope the rest of the Kitchen into their production. She found a rumble in her chest as she said more quietly, "Oh, come on, it might be good for me to see the Maze through different eyes. Nothing's really come through in the last month, and this might jar something loose."

More rain clouds now, this time over Minho's head.

"Cheer up, mate," Newt interjected in hopes of staving off the impending Typhoon Minho, "Rose just means you're distracting."

Normally, a compliment like that would have had the Runner's head spinning with delight, but Minho just stared ceaselessly at Rose, the unmistakable obsidian of betrayal in his eyes. She felt her resolve buckle almost immediately.

"What about Thomas?" Chuck chimed in with his innocent wide eyes and even more innocent young heart. "I mean, they're already together, so why can't they run together?"

"They're not together anymore," Minho replied tersely before he chomped the head off a carrot, and everyone's utensils dropped to the table.

"Are you serious right now!" Rose shouted at the Keeper.

"What?" he said innocently. "I thought everyone knew."

Thomas' eyes narrowed at the other Runner as the muscles in his forearms flashed. "It just happened last night. How do _you_ know?"

Minho shrugged. "I thought that's what she and Newt were talking about yesterday."

Thomas's eyes shifted to Newt, and Rose slammed her forehead against the table as she grumbled, "Slim it, you moron."

"I don't understand what's going on?" Chuck said as his gaze bobbed from one boy to the next.

"That makes two of us," Alby replied. Rose could tell from the wary tremor in their leader's voice that somehow this was all going to come back on her.

She sensed an upcoming lecture behind the Kitchen again, but before Alby could demand an audience with her, Thomas interjected, "You're right, Rose and I might not be together right now, but you know we'll always find our way back to each other, even with our memories wiped."

 _Oh fuck, oh fuck._

Minho opened his mouth. "Same could be said for—"

 _Oh fuck, no._

Rose found Minho's foot and stomped until his knee banged reflexively on the table.

"Cool it, you two idiots," Alby warned. "That klunk don't matter right now. Rose might be onto something in the Maze. I say it's worth a try if it gets us out of this klunkhole faster, so put her with Renato today."

Minho jabbed a finger in Alby's direction as he narrowed his eyes. "In case you all forgot, that's _my_ Maze. I decide who runs in it, I decide who runs together in it, and I decide where they run, not some pancake-eatin', wannabe Admiral. Rose runs with me and that's final."

Alby and Minho locked in a no-holds-barred staring contest that seemed to stretch into eternity until, at last, Minho's brow furrowed and he growled.

"Slintheads! Every last one of ya!" the Keeper shouted as he tossed his tray up on the buffet.

"I thought you had a good feeling about today?" Chuck mused sweetly without a hint of sarcasm.

"Shut up, Upchuck," snapped Minho.

"You leave my Chuck alone," Rose scolded, and the Runner seethed before he stormed out of the Kitchen, the door banging in his wake.

Chuck tugged at his shirt collar as he tried to distract from his blush. "I'm her Chuck."

The table snickered, which left Rose with room to breathe again. She had enough dirty laundry to keep the Sloppers busy for the rest of their lives, and she didn't need Minho airing it all out now or she'd never be able to do what needed to be done. She had to get things back on track so she could convince everyone this was all still business-as-usual even if it felt more like the end of the world.

Rose forced herself to finish breakfast, though with every passing second, she felt her hunger wane. It wasn't just her impending departure that she regretted, but the way Thomas had been lobbing shy smiles and hopeful glances her way now that Minho was gone, as though she should have already forgotten their breakup. Even worse, it reminded her of her own betrayals—all of them. She didn't deserve Thomas or any of them. She deserved exactly what was coming to her.

For the rest of the meal, Rose forced herself to remain polite but indifferent to help build up the mental distance she needed to do what had to be done, but the moment Thomas finally left for the Maze, Newt interlaced his fingers with hers under the table, and she could not ignore her best friend's grounding touch.

"You all right?" he whispered.

"I will be soon." No need to mention anything beyond that.

"You sure about heading out with Renny? He's a great Runner and all, but—" Newt cut himself off and softly banged his fist against the table. "Damn this buggin' klunk leg. I could go with you, Rose. I was a Runner once, I still know the Maze. Maybe going slower would give you more time to pick up on things?"

"Renato's going to be pissed when he finds out how little faith all of you have in him," Rose deflected before she disentangled their hands. Despite her better judgment, she spared a moment to brush a tuft of Newt's unruly locks back from his eyes so she could savor one last look at them. She would miss how forthright they always were.

With a light sigh, Rose stood up and added, "Stay out of trouble while I'm gone, kay?"

"When you ain't here, there's never trouble," Alby observed as he contemplated whether or not to eat his last pancake.

Chuck could afford to be much more overt in his goodbye. He wrapped his arms around Rose's waist and crushed her with his love. "Sorry about you and Thomas and stuff. When things are going to klunk for me, I like to eat some of Fry's chocolate cake. I'll go see if he can make you some for when you get back."

"What would I do without you, Chuck?" Rose said as she hugged him back quickly.

She had to get out of here before she started crying.

"All right, you saps," Rose said as she hurried to the exit, "I'm outta here. Love ya!"

She shouldn't have added that last bit— _so much for distance_ —but they may as well know it once.

Without another moment to lose, Rose shouldered her pack, thankful that no one had bothered to inspect it with all of the supplies she'd stashed, and jogged toward the West Doors before she was wrenched into the woods.

A hand covered her mouth and snuffed out her scream before she could get it out. "What the hell are you trying to pull here, woman?"

Minho glared angrily down at her, but as was usual with him, it was hard to focus on his words when his body pressed against her. Rose swiped his hand from her mouth and scowled. "You shouldn't have said that stuff at breakfast."

He sighed. "What's the big deal? Everyone had to find out anyway."

"It wasn't your news to break. Besides, you have as much tact as a sledgehammer."

"Says the woman who just slept with me. Three times." Rose puckered her lips because she had no other retort, and Minho's sly fox-grin returned. "Forget Renato. Be with me instead."

Rose's heart quickened and she struggled to stay clear-headed. Underneath the comforts of bacon and eggs, he still smelled faintly of her and their heated night together.

"You're just getting possessive because of last night."

"So what if I am? You said you're mine, or do I need to remind you of that?" Minho ran a hand up her inner thigh, his thumb nuzzling her folds beneath her pants as he mouthed along the shell of her ear. "Run with me today, then you can shower with me after."

"I can't," Rose asserted breathily through the haze that clouded her vision. He yanked his hand away and she sagged forward.

"Why not?"

"Minho, I'll be fine. We've still got a job to do, but we don't always have to do it together. Let me try this my way for once."

Suddenly serious, he gripped her chin and guided her eyes to his. "Why do I feel like you're going to leave me again?"

"Minho." Rose placed a hand on his chest and splayed her fingers over his heart. "It's one day. You'll be all right without me."

His hand folded over hers, and he squeezed so tightly it hurt. "I'll never be all right without you."

She raised up on her tiptoes and glossed her lips over Minho's in a ghost of a kiss. With that, Rose trotted toward the looming Doors, desperate to bury the tears welling up in her chest. There would be time to shed them later.

Anil waited there with a peculiar look on his face, something she had never seen on him before even when things with Cat had been nearing the end—it looked like worry. Rose hesitated, not wanting to face his scrutiny, but there was no other way into the Maze.

His tone was cautionary and his eyes were suspicious. "I sense death surrounding you today, little Rose Bush."

Rose glanced around for others who might be lurking nearby; the last thing she needed this close to her fate was another inquisition. She shushed him and whispered, "That's what I'm trying to avoid, Anil. You know I'll do anything to protect everybody here—anything. Don't bring it up to the others, okay? Please, promise me. I need you all to be safe."

Anil considered but instead said, "Have you seen your namesake in the Deadheads recently?"

Rose shook her head, trying to comprehend what that damn plant in the graveyard could have to do with this moment between them.

The Keeper of the Baggers placed a hand on Rose's shoulder. She had never felt Anil's touch before, mostly because she figured he didn't quite understand the nuances of connecting with people, but it was as heavy as the implications of his words. "Its flowers have faded and its leaves are withering."

"All right, I get it," Rose said, wrenching away. "You know what I'm going to do, but you should also know I have to do it. You said yourself I'll be the reason people will die. No more. I need to keep everyone safe, and this is the only way I know how."

Anil paused, his face perfectly placid. "A wrong thing done for the right reasons is still a wrong thing."

Before Rose could respond, Renato appeared. He had skin the color of sun-ripened olives, a wine stain of a birthmark over his right eyebrow, and zero patience for Rose's antics. He jerked his head toward the corridor without stopping to greet her.

"Anil, please…" she whispered.

The Keeper of the Baggers narrowed his eyes before he looked away. Rose had hoped for a goodbye or a good luck or some sage riddle for her to mull over on her journey, but he said nothing, and she had to go.

"I'll miss you, my friend," she added, glossing her fingers over his like a xylophone.

Into the Maze for the last time—it was a surreal feeling. Rose remembered that looming sense of destiny that had overwhelmed her the moment she had first laid eyes on the Doors. She recalled thinking she would find out who she was in here, not realizing then she would be defined by it. Everything had started here, and it would end here, too.

A half hour into their run, Renato let up just a bit so Rose could close the gap between them. Without preamble, he said, "I assume you know the Maze Rules by now."

She thought about asking Renato about Minho's Rule Three, but what little she had gleaned from their meager interactions over the last few months told her the joke would be received more with a frown than a laugh, and she needed Renato off her back today. Instead, Rose grumbled her assent.

"Good. Keep up and keep quiet," was all he added before he took off into the bowels of the Maze at double the speed.

They ran for hours with no more than a few dozen words between them. Breaks had to be begged for, and lunch was a mechanical affair with no frills, which meant no conversation. It was a stark reminder of just how accustomed Rose had become to Minho's repartee. Without it, this world was reduced to only gray walls and dull stone.

Barely ten minutes into lunch, as Rose guzzled a long draft of water, Renato shot to his feet. Still weak from how hard he'd been driving her all morning, she blurted, "Do you think—"

He pursed his lips. "Is this about the Maze?

"Not really. Just trying to—"

"Shh," he commanded with a fierce pantomime of zipping lips.

"I just thought it might be—"

"Shuck. You tryin' to get me killed? No talking unless you remember something."

Rose quirked an eyebrow. "What did Minho say to you?"

"Not just Minho," was all Renato grumbled before he tossed the last half of his lunch back into his backpack and nodded down the corner. "Time to move."

"But I haven't finished my sandwich yet," she whined.

"I like it better when you run. You don't talk so much."

Rose gaped at the back of his head. She had barely said a few dozen words in three hours; hell, Renato had said more than she had. With a long sigh, Rose repacked her bag, and as she reluctantly stood, she caught sight of a beetle blade high up in the vines.

 _Now is as good a time as any…_

"Fine," she groused, "but I need a bathroom break first."

"Hurry it up," Renato huffed and trotted to the opposite end of the corridor.

Rose jogged around the first bend she could find and waited for the silver centipede to follow. As it rounded the corner, she waved to it to catch its full attention, and it scampered further down the wall.

"Hey, dickheads, down here."

The beetle blade buzzed and tapped its feet against the concrete.

"I know you're there." A bit more firmly, she added, "Dr. Espina, Dr. Thorne."

The centipede didn't twitch a joint, but Rose knew the scientists were listening. She could practically see their stern faces glowing green behind the wall of monitors.

"I want to make a deal. I remember my Protocol as well as the last Directive. You make sure all my boys are safe back in the Glade, then you close those Doors fast, and I'll come back to WICKED. We all know what needs to be done, and I'm ready, but this is non-negotiable. The other Subjects need to be out of the Maze or things won't end so cleanly and you'll be months, maybe years, behind in your research."

Rose's hands trembled, but it wasn't adrenaline this time—it was fear. She called upon the ghost of Rosalind to grant her the conviction she needed to persuade the other scientists to bend to her will, and she could only hope she pulled it off as she jutted her chin and stared unblinking into the beady red eyes of the insectile camera.

"We have a deal? Clockwise for yes, counterclockwise for no."

There was a long pause, long enough that she heard Renato beckoning her on the other side of the wall. At last, the silver abomination scuttled around in a perfect circle, like a second hand sweeping around the face of a clock in perfect clockwise fashion.

Rose breathed at last. "Remember, once everyone's out, make it quick and I'm WICKED's."

The beetle blade disappeared back into a blanket of vines, and Rose closed her eyes as she worked to stamp out the millions of anxious ants that crawled under her skin. She felt dirty, poisoned, infested. She dug her fingernails into the meat of her palms until she felt the satisfying bite of her skin yielding under the pressure. Droplets of blood slicked her hands.

"You taking a damn klunk?" Renato barked. "Let's _go_!"

With the deal struck, there was nothing left to do but put on one last show.

The pair spent the rest of their day together in near total silence until Renato led Rose to a clutch of bulbous pillars he called the Eggs, which pulsated up and down across an expanse of holey concrete. When Rose gave no reaction, he groaned dramatically and told her it was time to head home.

By now, Rose could recognize the vast majority of twists and turns, though whether it was from her preexisting memories or the Runners' notations on the walls, she wasn't sure, but she knew they were closing in on the home stretch. It was the penultimate movement in Rose's all-too-brief composition, and she could feel it building to its crescendo.

Renato checked his watch for the tenth time in the last few minutes. Under Minho's training, Rose had gotten progressively better at reading the time just from the sky, and she knew what was left of their time together was short, but she needed to buy a few more minutes to be sure everyone else was out of the Maze.

Rose stumbled and braced against the closest wall, her fingers gripping two tendrils of ivy as though they would hold her up.

"You okay, Rose?" There was genuine panic in the Runner's voice.

Jeez, what had her boys done to poor Renato? At the thought of what they might do to him when she didn't return, she thought about calling off her deal, but she knew Anil would set the others straight once the shock had worn off. Maybe cooler heads could prevail.

As long as Minho wasn't there. _Please don't let Minho be there_.

"I think I'm remembering something," Rose said, grabbing her forehead for dramatic effect.

Renato seemed to buy it, for he slowed down and turned to face her. He tried to sound firm but his voice wavered as he said, "You got twenty minutes to remember before I drag you out of here."

 _Another five should do the trick_ , she thought. They were almost back to the Glade anyway. More than likely, the rest of the Runners were already back.

Rose could tell just by the intensity of Renato's twitching that her five minutes had elapsed, and she nodded and began jogging, letting him take the lead.

"Well, did you remember?" he volleyed over his shoulder.

"I remembered all I needed to," she replied.

She heard something like a relieved sigh from Renato before they rounded one of the last corners before the West Door came into view. Rose glanced up and saw an eager beetle blade shimmying up and down the wall. The others must all have been back and her deal with WICKED was still on. Did she feel relief or dread? No, it was nausea. She clutched her stomach before she could throw up all over the concrete.

As the hurried down the home stretch, to her horror, Rose realized half the Glade was waiting for her. Anil still patrolled the door, but behind him was a sea of eager faces. Gally, Eli, and a couple of her other Builder friends waited off to the left along with Winston and Bark, while on the right stood Jeff, Clint, and Chuck. In the middle waited Newt, Alby, and Thomas. But front and center was Minho.

His arms were crossed and his biceps flexed at the sight of her. One dimple perforated his cheek. There was a dark cast to his eyes, the now-familiar river of heady espresso. Her heart thrashed against her rib cage at the sight

Rose let her feet slow beneath her, not enough to raise the alarm, just enough to portray exhaustion. They still had ten minutes before the Doors were supposed to close—nothing to worry about yet.

The second Renato crossed the threshold into safety, Rose stopped. A number of eyebrows quirked up as the others stared at her, but she could only stare blankly back.

"Come on, Doc," chided Minho with a grin. "I'm too shuck tired to carry your ass."

But Rose didn't smile back. She glanced to the thick ivy that clothed the corridor beside her where three beetle blades waited, spinning frantically in clockwise circles.

Suddenly, Bark let out a tremendous woof, and everyone flinched.

"Everything all right, Rose?" Newt asked slowly.

Bark growled and his haunches raised as Winston did his best to soothe his dog.

"Rose?" Thomas echoed, the razor-sharp edge of his best friend's suspicion also tainting his voice. He took a few steps closer as did Minho.

"This isn't funny, Rose," Minho warned. Even from within the Maze, she could hear his accelerating breaths.

The monotonous _click-click-click_ of the mechanical centipedes' feet stilled, and with it, all the sounds in the Glade seemed to silence until the dog started barking frantically. Bark wouldn't stop. None of this would stop. Rose covered her ears, but it was in her bones.

She looked back out at her boys and caught Minho's eyes. He knew. No more espresso, just ice-cold coffee. He took a step forward, two, three, quicker and quicker until he was running.

Rose smiled at him through shimmering eyes. "Good—"

And the Doors snapped shut.


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter Twenty-Five**

 _RAIGN – Raise the Dead_

What had she done? What the fuck had she just done?

Rose crumpled against the wall, nearly catatonic but without the mercy of deafness. Every howl of rage, every bark of warning, every roar of fear thundered through fifteen feet of concrete and straight into her chest. A chorus of voices chanted her name and screamed every obscenity they could remember, even those she had reintroduced into their Glader vocabulary.

Rose tried to convince herself she'd done the right thing, that this way none of her boys would die, but why did it sound like they already were? Her vision smeared as sobs overtook her.

Wood clattered uselessly against rock as the Gladers jettisoned primitive weapons at the doors. Metallic clanking echoed inside, too, as the Builders hurled tools. It didn't matter. They weren't getting in here.

WICKED might have been full of sadists, but Rose was some kind of masochist. She willed her limbs to move her away from their anguish, but her body refused to listen. She pressed her hands flat against the Doors and rested her forehead between them, sending silently apologies to the other side.

She wanted to allow herself a few more minutes to wallow in her heartbreak, but the beetle blades above her tapped their feet like a teacher's fingers drumming while waiting for a student's answer. Whatever else she wanted, Rose had a duty to first protect the others.

 _I wonder what this place will make of you._

Newt's words from her first day looped in her head. For a while, Rose thought it had made her a liar and a monster, but she now knew unequivocally that she had always been a liar and a monster. No, the Glade had made her human again, and for that, she would be forever grateful. It was why she was giving up everything—they were worth the sacrifice.

"Goodbye," Rose whispered before turning back to the Maze.

Though she didn't exactly know where she was going, she had the beetle blades for a guide. They skittered forward in a line like shepherds leading her to the rest of her flock. There was no need to rush when she had all night to herself, so Rose walked, dragging her fingers along the wall. She didn't even spare a worry for a Griever—no reason for WICKED to send them when she was coming willingly—and the Maze wasn't even pretending to change.

Walking the Maze was even more impressive than running it. Rose was dwarfed by the magnitude of Thomas and Teresa's creation, the high walls, the nuanced hydraulics, the sheer physics of all of it. Even Rosalind would have bowed before such ingenuity.

And Newt had been right. The slower pace allowed more demons to tunnel under the wall in her mind. Boys being impaled on stingers, boys being ripped limb from limb by hacksaws and drills embedded in oozing insectile skin, boys being sliced in half trying to escape the Trials—all watched from behind the safety of screens in the underground honeycomb at WICKED. Rose remembered more and more death until she was convinced it was all she had ever known.

Was there ever a moment in any of her lives that wasn't steeped in horror?

Minho.

Her one perfect thing. Their one stolen night when nothing else had mattered.

Rose's feet stuttered.

It had all been worth it—every scheme, every Directive—worth it to taste his lips, to feel him, to love him. Rose had been trying to save the human race—to save him—and instead he had saved her.

What was he doing now? Probably threatening poor Renato's life no doubt or thinking of ten different ways he could break into the Maze. It would all be useless, of course, but that wouldn't stop someone as tenacious as Minho. And tomorrow when she was gone, he would comb the corridors for her, but he'd never find her. Rose wondered, after all was said and done with her Protocol, would WICKED ever tell him what happened to her? And even if they gave enough shits about her to do that, would there ever come a day after the world healed from the Flare that he could find a way to forgive her many sins?

When Rose came up for air from her pity party, it was dark in the ever-shadowy corridors. Only the brightest stars winked overhead in the sherbet sky.

Where was she? Rose had been mindlessly following her robotic tour guides as her consciousness embarked on a journey through the funhouse of horrors she called her life, and now she couldn't recall a single landmark she had passed.

Something didn't feel right. Rose was dizzy without moving. The air felt thinner, as though she'd been climbing a mountain, but the temperature kept rising, and with it came tangible steam that dampened the hair on her arms and collected in rivulets in the hollow of her throat. A strange smell joined the fray, something familiar but long-forgotten, though this memory didn't feel erased so much as a joyfully repressed.

Scrubbed potatoes and pungent cabbage. The aroma of boiled ham.

Rose grabbed her temples as pain ripped her in half. She crumpled to the floor screaming at the top of her lungs as her brain fractured like a geode being smashed to reveal the shards locked inside. Her vision whitened. She screamed until her throat went hoarse.

Until she became someone else.

* * *

Sunlight streamed in through the window, washing everything in gleaming brilliance. A steady breeze stirred the fragrances in the kitchen as thoroughly as the wooden spoon that teetered on the edge of the stove.

Drawn in by the smells of impending dinner and the sound of dulcet humming, she dragged a chair over to the sink and kneeled on it so she could watch slender white hands scour soil from brown, cratered skins.

"Come to help your Mam, Bridget?"

There was a smile in her mother's words, robust and brighter than the afternoon sun, overriding even her sharp r's and pretty accent. The woman glanced at Bridget sidelong, one orange eyebrow raised mischievously over her gray eyes. The steamy kitchen polished the rosy apple of her mother's cheeks while the fresh air matted the fine mist of sweat at her brow.

Bridget nodded and dove into the bin of potatoes she had helped dig up from their garden that morning.

"Good," her mother continued, "'cause your sister keeps getting in the way."

They glanced down at her mother's balloon of a stomach pressed against the countertop and shared a laugh. Together, Bridget washed the rest of the potatoes while her mother peeled them with a stubby knife. As they finished the last one, Bridget asked, "When's Dad coming home?"

Her mother smiled, her pale pink lips softening into a wistful grin. "You know your Dad. He'll be here exactly as he said, half past five. Now, help me with cabbage, would ya?"

As the pair finished prepping dinner and singing their favorite songs at the tops of their lungs, the sun dipped lower in the sky. Shadows lengthened and the temperature rose with the boiling water as they set the table and waited to surprise Bridget's father with a round of hugs.

But he didn't come at 5:30 or 5:31 or even the next several minutes after that.

As the clock rounded six, her mother paced the length of their little house, rubbing her belly like a magic lamp as though she could wish the man home.

Bridget's father was never late. Ever. It didn't matter whether he was gone for six hours or six months, if he told them he'd be back at 5:30 on the thirteenth of August, then that doorknob would turn the moment the second hand passed the twelve. Punctuality was his pride and joy, perhaps even more so than Bridget herself, and it was as important to him as the tucks on their sheets and the straight rows of their picture frames.

It was 8:02, and still he wasn't home.

The sun had vanished behind the craggy spikes of mountains, charring Bridget's world with apricot fire and inky silhouettes. Her mother's lithe figure had been patrolling the weathered floor boards for two and a half hours.

"Shh," she sang to her stomach, "all's well, Rosie. Shh."

Bridget did her best to draw her mind to anything other than the ice-cold colcannon on the dinner table and the empty head seat. She busied her fingers scrawling patterns against the fabric of their couch and then brushing the grain flat again. When the dread built in her chest, she moved to her tiny room, already crammed with her bed and the new addition of a crib.

Bridget didn't have a lot of possessions, and the ones she did have were mainly scavenged—the world didn't make many new things anymore, especially a mile up in a haphazard chain of houses too far apart to call a village, but she did have her fiddle. Though she'd only been practicing for less than a year, she felt a deep connection to it just as her daideó had promised. Whenever Bridget was at her loneliest or most afraid, especially when her father was on another tour, she played—so she had had plenty of chances to practice over the last year.

She reveled in the screeches of her bow over its strings, high and sharp and almost ear-piercing, but it was just what she needed to crowd out the nagging voice of a scared little girl in the back of her head. Bridget was on her second verse of "Tripping Up the Stairs" when the door to her room burst open.

Her mother raced inside, her wild pumpkin curls obscuring everything but her humongous eyes. She slammed the door and dragged the crib in front of it.

"Help me, Bridget! Help me push the dresser over here."

Bridget dropped her fiddle and grabbed one side of the dresser, letting her mother push the one side as the little girl guided the other in front of the door. Bridget's pet mouse, Gus, scampered around his cage as his home shifted beneath him.

"Get under the bed and never, _ever_ come out unless I tell you to. Don't ya move, ya folla me?"

"Mam?" Bridget's voice cracked.

"Get!"

Tears muddying her vision, Bridget shimmied into the wedge of space under her bed until she was as far back as she could go. Her world was reduced to swollen ankles, dusty slippers, the dresser and the crib, and the door frame.

Other than Bridget's own muted sniffles, the only thing she could hear was metered tapping along the hallway on the other side of wall.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

It grew closer and closer until finally she heard a knock at her door.

"Colleen…"

Bridget thought she recognized the voice, but where it had once been filled with a firm, guiding baritone, this one was high-pitched and wild, like the howl of the wolves on a moonlit night.

They weren't knocks on the door anymore, they were bangs.

"Colleen! Colleen, for fuck's sake, open this fucking door right now!"

Bridget's mother's voice hitched as she choked on a sob. "Go on, David! I'm sorry, I love you, but you're mad with it. Ya can't stay."

"Colleen, just listen, baby, you're not well." The sharp edges to his voice dulled as Bridget's father seemed to return. His cadence was measured now with that confident rhythm he always had when he was teaching Bridget something new. "That's the virus talking, but it's all gonna be okay. I'm going to get you the help you need, and we'll figure this out. You just come out, come with me, and we'll talk, just talk like always, okay? You'll see everything's just fine.

"Tell me, baby, where's Bridget?"

Bridget could hear breaths firing from her mother's lips like an automatic weapon. Slippered feet shuffled further away from the door until they bumped against the baseboard. "She's staying over at a friend's house."

"Liar! You fucking liar!" he boomed and the room shook. "I heard her playing that fucking violin. Always grating my fucking ears. I know she's here, and she wants to see her Daddy.

"Bridget, honey, come see Daddy. Daddy's missed you. He needs to take you away from Mommy. She's not well, baby, she's sick. You need to open this door and let Daddy in so he can take you somewhere safe until Mommy's better."

Bridget cowered under the bed. Her legs trembled, and she worried she was telegraphing exactly where she was. She didn't know who was on the other side of that door, but it wasn't her father. She couldn't let that man get her.

"She's not here, David. Please, we have to get ya help."

Another thunk on the other side of the door, like a head knocking against it instead of a fist. The knob rattled a few times though, for now, the lock held.

Then silence. A long, long draft of silence.

Bridget's eyes scoured her small window of sight. Where had he gone? Did he leave? Would he ever? What was going on?

Her mother was still rooted against the back wall, but Bridget could see the tremble that rippled down into her mother's ankles.

Bridget wasn't sure how long she'd been under the bed, but her limbs cramped and her stomach ached. She had to pee and she felt like throwing up even on an empty stomach.

After an eternity of silence, Bridget ventured a finger out from under the bed frame. The effect was immediate.

"Colleen… Colleen. Colleen!"

Bridget's father's hand punched through the bedroom door as though it was made of paper. Splinters of wood showered down onto the dirty carpet, a few pieces tumbling under the bed.

The hand groped around the door until it found the knob and unlocked it. On the other side, her father slammed his body against the wood, the door banging against the barricade, but it couldn't hold, not against the unrelenting rage on the other side. A few more slams and the dresser tipped and the crib slid back.

With a clatter, Gus's cage overturned, and the little brown creature scampered toward the safety of the bed and his redheaded owner only to be squashed with a sickening crunch under a black boot. Bridget clamped her hand over her mouth to silence her scream as she jammed her eyes shut. She burrowed back into the shadows hoping to emerge in a wonderland like one of her favorite books, but the only thing she hit was the wall.

The world was reduced to blackness and cruel sound. Crunching wood. Throaty roars. Scratching, smashing, tearing, slapping. And pleading, so much pleading, high-pitched and heart-wrenching. Bridget covered her ears, but it wasn't enough.

Her mother sobbed. "David, leave now, I'm warning ya. Don't make me hurt ya. David, please. David, Rosie! Rosie, Rosie, Rosie! Stop. God, think of your daughters, David!"

And then there was screaming, so loud it could break windows or shatter the world—Bridget's world.

Feral grunts and snarls joined the fray along with something that sounded like gnashing teeth.

And then suddenly it was quiet.

Except for the rabbit thump of Bridget's heart, nothing moved. She didn't even think of leaving her hiding spot; her mother hadn't told her it was okay.

A bloody hand groped into the darkness beneath the bed. Bridget recognized a tattoo on the forearm, an eagle with antique script unraveling below its talons: "This We'll Defend." And there were newer tattoos along with it she didn't recognize, not made with ink but ribbons of filthy blood pooling beneath skin.

A face dipped down and wedged between the frame and the floor, luminous white skin mottled with black rivers and a deranged smile stained red. It was a broad, rectangular face with thick black stubble and a bold L-shaped jawline, a face Bridget had thought she knew.

But the eyes… The eyes were wild, almost as though they had no lids anymore. She could see their full whites, fractured with onyx, and the irises—once a sage green—had been overtaken by enormous pupils.

"There you are, sweetheart. Come to Daddy. Don't worry, your mother can't hurt you anymore."

Bridget's eyes slid past the man-creature to slender fingers curled upward like an unfurling flower. An aura of orange curls veiled the now-lifeless doll tossed on the floor behind him.

"Bridget, come out. Daddy's just trying to help everybody. Come on, come out so Daddy doesn't have to come and get you." Her father's fingers coiled under the bed frame, and Bridget noticed the tip of one of them was missing—just gone, like the man who had once lived inside this sickly skin.

She was terrified and confused, but she didn't have any choice. Bridget wriggled out from under the bed, crawling through a thin stream of blood emanating from the shrouded sleeping beauty behind them. Red coated Bridget's hands and oozed down her forearms to her elbows. She was swimming in death. She was drowning in it.

Her father waited with both hands on his hips, same as he often did when he supervised their projects together in the shed, their sanctuary where he had taught Bridget how to tinker and build.

"Good girl. Smart girl. That's my girl," he cooed in a raspy voice as he ran a hand over her crown, the still-open wound on his fingertip pumping a geyser of blood into her already red locks.

Bridget tried to be brave, tried to check on her mother, but she couldn't make it past her mother's waist. Her beautiful legs were folded like broken toothpicks and dappled with sprays of crimson. Her mother's skirt bunched around her narrow hips like wind-blown garbage, and her other slackened hand cradled the blood-soaked paring knife she'd used to prepare her husband's welcome home dinner. And then there was that still mountain of a stomach once full of life, not only full of rot.

Bridget's father loomed in front of her, bleeding, two bursts of reddish black on either side of his abdomen, though they didn't seem to faze him.

"You understand, don't you, baby? Mommy was sick. It's Daddy's job to take care of the sick people."

"Rosie..." Bridget sobbed, surprised she still had a voice left.

"Rosie was sick, too, because Mommy was sick. I had to take care of them, you know that. And you're sick, too, sweetheart."

Things clicked into place. The sudden violence had numbed Bridget, but it was wearing off in favor of something new. She had to get out, get away, and get help. She willed her voice to be braver than she felt: "And you're going to take care of me?"

"Mm-hm, that's my job, right? Take care of the sick people? Now be a good little Crank and let Daddy cure you." Her father stooped down and plucked the knife from her mother's fingers as he smiled at his daughter with all the warmth of an escaped lunatic.

Bridget had lost her family and her voice, but she had not lost her ability to run. She was small and fast and nimble, and she hurdled over the overturned dresser and bolted down the hall. In less than a minute, she plunged headlong into the night. Bitter, arid air buffeted her blazing skin.

The day had been hot, but the night was icy. Dew had already gathered on the rocks and made every footstep perilous as Bridget raced in the only direction she could think to go. She charged into a copse of wind-battered pines she often played in, running uphill toward the Whitlocks, their closest neighbors.

With only a half-moon and muscle memory to guide her way, Bridget scrambled on all fours up the steep incline. It was the hardest way to go, but it was the way she knew best, and she relied on the clustering shadows to hide her.

"I'm coming for you, baby!" Her father's voice echoed off the mountaintops. "I can smell the Flare in you, my little Crank. Rot, rot, rot. I smell your disease. You can't run from this, darling. You can't run from me."

But Bridget did run, higher and faster until she emerged from the woods and found the honey of lamplight in the Whitlocks' windows. She just had to cross their garden, and she could be safe again.

As she crested the lip of hillside, her feet spun on flakes of sandstone and sent her sliding belly first into her father's waiting arms. Her feet wheeled on the tops of his boots as her body refused to give up running. They were locked in a deadly father-daughter dance.

Bridget screamed at the top of her lungs, but it wasn't loud enough. No one rescued her.

"You'll be cured soon enough," her father reassured in her ear as his fingers, even the bloody nub, dug into her waist.

Bridget was small and her father was all-powerful, and he held her firmly with one hand as the other reached into his back pocket. He withdrew the paring knife, the silver glinting like his teeth in the moonlight, and turned her around in his arms so that the only thing she could see was the all-consuming blackness of night. Her father lined the blade under her left ear and, without another word, slit Bridget's throat.

In spite of the gaping wound at her neck, her hands flailed for the knife and grabbed its handle, her fingers curling around her father's. With the last of her strength, Bridget drove her father's hand backward, blade first into his abdomen. He grunted and dropped her in the grass before regaining his composure. He stuttered forward, one foot lagging behind the other.

"You filthy little Crank, I'll—"

It was a clear night, but thunder boomed across the mountain range, startling sleeping birds from their roosts. Bridget's father dropped beside her, one ever-wide eye lining up perfectly with hers.

It was dark and she was dying, so the blackness came from around her as well as within her, but with her last waking thought, Bridget noted how peaceful her father looked with that tidy bullet hole in his brain.


	26. Chapter 26

**Chapter Twenty-Six**

 _Ruelle – Monsters_

The smell of cabbage lingered in the air as Rose woke on the stone floor. Cold penetrated every cell in her body. Night had fallen and the jade curtain had unspooled in the obsidian sky.

Rose sat up and checked her scar. She could feel blood rushing down her neck, but when she pulled her hand back, no red came with it.

 _Worry about it later, Rose—Rosalind—Bridget, whoever you are!_

What time was it? For all Rose could tell, the Doors could be opening in an hour, and she had to be gone before then.

Gone where? Back to a world that housed only horrors? Compared to what lurked on the other side of the Maze walls, the Glade was a blessing. Even without access to any of her memories, Rose had known this. When she had told Newt that "it could always be worse," the very core of her being had remained imprinted with a legacy of brutality.

If anything, Bridget's memories galvanized Rose. She had to finish her Protocol, for the sake of the family she'd lost and the new one she'd found, so that they would never remember the Flare and what it had taken from all of them, but she had to finish it quickly.

Above her, only one of the beetle blades waited with its legs tucked tightly along its length and its usually brilliant red lights dulled. As soon as it sensed her movement, however, it revved back to life and surged forward. It wasn't fast enough for Rose, but it was as fast as it was willing to go, which was suspicious in its own right. Beetle blades were programmed by WICKED; if they were taking their time, it was because WICKED wanted it that way.

After another torturous hour of walking, with nothing but the beetle blade's clicking and Bridget's horrid memories for company, Rose rounded a bend she recognized. A long scratch shaped like a sideways L marked one wall: Minho's symbol for the Cliff.

And suddenly Rose remembered—remembered all of the times Rosalind had crawled up from the black abyss, hands chalky from the concrete ledge, and slipped into the Maze as though she had always been there.

Her answer was over the Cliff.

 _Points to Newt for the walking idea,_ Rose thought. She might never have remembered otherwise.

The Cliff was more monstrous than she recalled. Before her, the corridor ended in nothingness, only blackness above or below her. It would have been terrifying if Rose didn't know it was total bullshit. The illusion of oblivion was seamless, but more memories trickled in through the widening cracks in the levy in her brain, glimpses of hidden doors and keypads. She didn't know the passcodes, but she supposed she didn't need to since she was being invited.

Rose glanced up at the beetle blade and gave her best Minho-inspired smirk. "See ya in a few, Dr. Thorne."

But the silver centipede spun in a quick counterclockwise circle. _No_.

"What do you mean 'no'?"

 _No no no no no_ , it spun.

Rose took another step closer to the precipice. "Whatever. I'm coming in."

Her next step would have been her last in this klunkhole if it weren't for two sounds she never expected to hear again.

The Doors opening.

And the Grievers snarling.

"Shit! Shit!" Rose spat as she paced along the Cliff's lip. "You lying bastards. You slippery fucking bastards! What the fuck are you playing at? This wasn't part of our deal!"

 _No no no no no._

After a few minutes, the Doors closed.

"What the fu—"

The beetle blade switched directions. _Yes._

"What have you done?"

Rose picked up a grapefruit-sized chunk of fallen concrete and lobbed it at her mechanical tormentor. It knocked the creature to the ground upside down, its legs wheeling in the air, and Rose dove for the concrete to finish it. Gears, glass, and metal carapace exploded everywhere.

Her rage momentarily sated, the world returned to black and white. WICKED offered her a simple choice: leave the Maze or leave her friends to the Maze. It wasn't much of a choice.

Rose raced back toward the inner sanctum, praying her training was as good as she had hoped because no more beetle blades would be guiding her. More Grievers howled from all over the Section in a chorus of coordinated death. She dropped her head and pushed as fast as her muscles would let her. The fire inside her consumed oxygen as quickly as she could suck it in.

With every split in the Maze, Rose gambled with her friends' lives. She had no idea where they were—who was even inside—and she prayed she was making the right choices for once in her life.

No screams yet, but Rose could hear the cry of her name. Instead of metallic hissing, these were impassioned calls. It buoyed her heart, but it also meant that if she could hear them, so could the Grievers.

Suddenly, the boys weren't shouting her name anymore, they were just shouting.

Rose pulled up at the next intersection, a long T with no markings. She had no idea which direction to choose. She tuned her ears into the Maze as hard as she could, but everything echoed. She glanced up. A beetle blade stared at her for a moment before circling clockwise.

 _Yes yes yes yes yes._

Rose wished she had spent more time doing target practice or combat training with Gally as he had offered once—how she wanted to dismantle that thing. Instead, she flipped it the middle finger and dove down the left corridor. She relied on the homing beckon in her heart to guide her to the others.

 _Please,_ she thought, _please take me to them._

Closer to the entrance of the Maze, the shouts were louder now, a scream intermixed, too. She turned another corner and another and another until she found it.

Under an audience of three beetle blades, a bulbous creature bobbled like the repulsive larva of a monstrous slug. Legless and wet, its maggoty length was segmented and secreted a viscous ooze. From tip to tip, it was studded with needles and knives and spikes and dozens of other instruments of torture too horrifying to name. Rose had never seen a Griever before, but there was no mistaking it, and at the sight of it, a diagram of its anatomy bobbed in her brain, as though it were a blueprint in a book she'd once studied.

Three boys waged war with the creature's vicious appendages, their cast-off flashlights spinning on the floor with a dizzying strobe effect. Rose couldn't tell who they were but it was clear enough they were losing.

A reciprocating saw welded to an enormous metal arm unfurled above them and drove down toward one boy's head. From her side hallway, Rose charged at full speed and launched herself onto the blobular head of the Griever, knocking the arm to the side as the saw juddered against the wall.

Her fingers tightened around her chunk of rock as she smashed with reckless abandon. Pounding, pounding, pounding, she crushed her weapon into its gelatinous skin until it thunked against a box hidden inside it. With both hands, she hurled the rock down again, and after a tremendous crunch and a brief ear-splitting whine, the Griever flattened like a collapsing soufflé.

Rose towered over the wreckage, covered in slime and her own blood. Chunks of Griever skin clung to her elbows and shirt, and the smell of sewage and decay stung her nose and eyes.

"What are you doing here!" she demanded of the silhouettes waiting on the edge of her blurry vision.

"Saving you obviously," came a familiar lilting accent.

"My heroes," Rose deadpanned as she climbed out of the Griever carcass.

"Holy klunk!"

So, Chuck was here, too. Brave little Chuck who came for her.

Rose's heart panged as she approached the boys. Newt, Chuck, and Thomas stood there dumbstruck, their arms limp at their sides and their jaws slackened. They were dirtier than ever before and sported a few cuts, but they were all in one piece.

"Are you all right?" Thomas asked, sweeping Rose into breathless hug.

She melted into his embrace, burying her face into his neck. "Better than any of you shanks were about to be. You have no idea what's going on. You shouldn't have come in here."

"We don't know what's going on because you didn't tell us," Newt snapped.

"Fair point, but you can yell at me later. How'd you get in here?"

"Alby begged the Creators to open the Doors," Chuck answered.

"Alby? Our Alby sent non-Runners in here?" They nodded in unison, and Rose furrowed her brow. "How many of the others are inside?"

"Fifteen including us," Newt replied.

"Five groups of three," Thomas continued, "with a Runner in each group. Everyone took a different direction to find you."

 _Shit._

"Thomas, the Cliff, can you find it in the dark?" she asked, and he nodded. "Okay, I need you to go there and wait for me. If you see another Griever, go for the circuits at the front of its body. If you can destroy them, you'll disable it."

He looked at her skeptically. "What about you?"

"I'll be fine. I have to find the others and send them to you. There's a way out there, at the Cliff."

"You were going to leave without us?" Chuck asked as softly as a feather, and yet his voice cut like a Griever blade.

Rose winced, but the kid was risking his life for her, and she owed them all the truth. "It's not what you think, but yeah, I was gonna leave. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. If we make it out alive, I'll explain it then, but now I need you to trust me one last time, even if I don't deserve it. I never meant for any of you to be involved in this. Let me make it right, let me save them."

The next thing Rose knew, Chuck's arms were around her, then Newt's, and finally Thomas', all three of them crushing her in the tightest hug of her life. She tried to fold her arms around them all as she pressed her forehead to theirs.

"Man, Rose, you really stink," Chuck whispered as he wrinkled his nose, and they shared a brief laugh until another roar tattered the air.

Rose reluctantly shook them off and frowned. "Please go, and hurry. And if you see a beetle blade, take it out or lose it—they tell the Grievers where you are."

Her friends nodded and watched her take off down another corridor before they disappeared into the night as well.

First, she chanced upon the Keeper of the Builders thankfully unengaged in battle, and though Gally gave her one hell of a verbal lashing and a damn solid punch in the shoulder for her little stunt, he finally calmed enough to listen to her.

"Gally, what are you doing here? A month ago you were ready to banish me for coming in here, and now here you are, too."

"What can I say? I'm a Grade-A slinthead just like the rest of you."

Only then did Rose's eyes have a chance to shift to the unmistakable silhouette behind him. "What the hell is Ender doing here?"

"He owed you one," Gally volunteered with a firm slap to the other Keeper's cheek.

"You mean you threatened him?" Rose translated.

"Shuck yeah—" the portly kid exclaimed.

"Gave him an incentive," Gally corrected and underlined his words with a crack of his knuckles. "Go on, shuck-head, tell her you're glad she's okay."

"What a relief. She lives," the Slopper said through gritted teeth.

As much as Rose hated the kid, he was still a kid after all, and he hadn't asked for any of this either. She mustered the politest nod she could before sending the boy kicking and screaming along with Gally and their Runner escort, Jonas.

Not far from them, she found Clint, Jeff, and Renato backed into a corner by a small army of beetle blades. With a few well-placed swats of their spears and a barrage of rocks, they scattered the circle enough so that they could slip out, following Rose's direction until they shook their robot escorts. She tried to usher them on to the Cliff, but Clint grabbed her sticky arms and stopped her.

"We don't have—" Rose said before the Keeper cut her off.

"Yeah, yeah. Always so important. How do you expect to take care of the others when you can barely take care of yourself?" Clint jerked her hands up and leveled Jeff's flashlight over the ragged, weeping wounds there. He squeezed her fingers once before he added, "You really need to stop tormenting your poor hands. What did they ever do to you?"

"Clint, I really apprec—"

"I'm still your Keeper, too, you know, not just Minho. Let me do this."

She could only nod as Clint ripped along the hem of his shirt, wiped Rose's palms clean, and then bound them with a tight knot on the top. With that gentle smile he only reserved for the rarest of occasions, her Keeper teased, "Okay. Now, you were saying?"

"Cliff. Go. Now."

Rose had to admit she felt better, but she hadn't forgotten that the others were still out there. Minho was still out there.

Another short jaunt down an eastern corridor and Rose spotted Anil and Winston trotting toward her with a third boy slumped between them.

"We lost the Griever back there," Winston panted without preamble, "but Omar's hurt bad."

The Runner's tawny skin was stained a robust umber in the darkness, and he was conscious but weak. Winston had been patched up enough times over the years to know how to properly staunch a wound, so Rose wasn't surprised to find a decent tourniquet above a slice in Omar's thigh. There was no telling how much blood Omar had already lost or how much of it was on his skin. Still, she swallowed hard, afraid to touch him and induce another panic attack that could eat up more precious time, but she had to. Omar had risked himself for her without even knowing her—Rose owed him her all. She grabbed her backpack and pulled out some of her supplies to clean the wound and seal it with a proper bandage.

"That should hold for now, but we've got to get you out of here. Omar, do you think you have enough left in you to lead them to the Cliff?"

The Runner grumbled a yes, but from the tremor in his voice, it was hardly a confidence-booster.

To Omar's partners, Rose said, "Keep him awake as long as you can and off of his leg. He'll be all right for now but not if you get lost. If you can't make it to the Cliff, stop and wait. I'll come back for you."

The last thing she saw before leaving them was Anil's stern glare.

 _I sense death surrounding you…_

Anil was never wrong about death, and the placement of Omar's wound was worrisome—Rose had read enough anatomy books in the Med-hut to know that if the Griever had nicked the femoral artery, short of surgery, there wasn't much any of them could do. Now, fifteen other souls had joined her inside this labyrinthine coffin, and if she didn't act faster, it would be their final resting place.

Rose ran until someone tackled her from the side. Her first instinct was to punch, and she brought her fist toward her attacker but stopped at the last second when she recognized the furry sasquatch wrapped around her waist.

"You're alive!" Frypan gasped as his tackle turned into a fierce hug.

"Don't sound so surprised," Rose squeaked as she rubbed his back.

Fry released her and glowered at her. "I made you a cake, you shuck."

"What the hell were you thinking, Rose?" said a familiar voice from the corridor in front of her. Alby emerged from the netted shadows with his fists on his hips and his eyes so wide, she could see the whites around his irises reflecting the green sky.

"What the hell were _you_ thinking letting them in here?" she retorted but charged him for a hug anyway. She whispered in his ear, "I thought you wanted to protect your Gladers?"

"You are my Glader, slinthead," Alby barked right back as he embraced her, too. "I came back for you, and the others insisted on following. But don't worry, we make it out alive, I throw all of you in the Slammer soon as we get back."

"You mean the Creators just let you in? They never cared about us before, why would they care—"

And then Rose realized it. This was exactly what WICKED had banked on the whole time. This wasn't one of Rosalind's Directives, of that much she was sure. Her Protocol was supposed to end with her escape back to WICKED. There was another game afoot, and her stomach sank.

"Where's Minho?" Rose said as she glanced frantically behind the boys.

Frypan shrugged. "Said something 'bout hearing some song and took off."

She ran her hands over her face. "Damnit! Which way did he go?"

Frypan pointed behind them to the corridor from which they had just emerged.

"Alby," Rose said sternly, "I need you to go to the Cliff and organize the others. They should all be there by now. If we're going to break out of here tonight, we're going to need a good leader."

He nodded and, without another word, the pair headed off without her.

Minho couldn't be far. WICKED wouldn't allow anything to happen to him before Rose could get there; sick as it was, she knew that. This had Dr. Thorne's fingerprints all over it. Bitch had probably rigged some recording or mimicry to lure him away. They were using Rosalind's own Directives against her—heinous bastards.

Two more corners before Rose heard the familiar grunting and swearing. Her trusty ball of concrete bit into her clenching fist.

A Griever's fat body filled the hallway like a gelatinous cactus. She couldn't see Minho, but there was no mistaking the "Go shuck yourself, you rolling pile of klunk" that echoed on the other side.

Rose had no choice. She scrambled up the Griever's back on all fours. Slime soaked her knees as her feet skidded along the deadly forest of blades. Her hands slipped as she climbed up and she caught a jagged blade before she could slide back to the bottom. Blood slicked her palm through her bandage, and Clint was sure to be pissed, but only one thing mattered now.

Minho.

Once Rose reached the crown of the blob, she raised her weapon and slammed it down, but instead of sinking into soft flesh, it rebounded off a metal plate and tumbled into the darkness below. A boom arm whizzed at Rose's head and she ducked, narrowly missing it, until another clobbered her in the back. She grabbed onto a crude blade of rusty metal, but it snapped off the Griever's body and she tumbled into a heap at Minho's feet.

"You're late," he groused as he stopped a killing blow from a metal arm with a spear twined to a kitchen knife.

"Come on, did you really know I'd show?" Rose asked as she climbed back to her feet.

"I knew you couldn't leave all this," Minho retorted.

 _Even at a time like this_ … Rose groaned.

"Behind you!" she shouted. A drill darted forward on an articulated spike, and Rose looped her arms around Minho to deflect it at the last second.

"Doc!" he warned right back, his arms caging her as the boom arm returned and he blocked it with his spear again.

They were locked in a warrior's hug as they shielded one another from the beast. In spite of their situation, Rose smiled up from Minho's shoulder and found him just as cocky as always, a dimple and all.

"Switch?" she asked.

"Switch."

They spun around, back-to-back, warding off other instruments of evil until they could formulate a plan. They were trapped in a dead-end corridor, and the only way out was to go through the leviathan.

"Minho? Can you get to that plate on its head?"

"That thing has a head? How can you shucking tell?"

"Just wedge your spear under that square there," Rose barked and then baited, "if you think you can."

Minho growled and jabbed forward. "Course I can!"

It took him a few stabs, but eventually he wheedled the point of his spear through the Griever's flesh under the corner of the metal. It creaked up like a sewer grate, and Rose dove for the opening. Dodging the spikes at the apex of its body, she sawed inside the inky recess with her scrap of metal until the clicks and whirs stopped and the arms sagged like wilting buds.

"Damn, we're good," Rose trumpeted as she pulled her pilfered weapon back and slung it on her shoulder. She turned to Minho, expecting to find pride or even boasting. After all that, she didn't expect to find a shadow of a man.

"You're alive." His words were colder than stone.

Rose attempted a playful smile, but she could feel how it mangled her face. "Of course."

Minho rammed his spear into the twitching Griever carcass again and again and again. "You say that like anyone actually expected to find anything other than a body in here, Rose. I got that fruitcake Anil spouting klunk about death surrounding you, and Admiral Alby threatening a beetle blade with dismemberment if the Creators didn't let us in, and Newt thought you were gonna— Well, you can imagine what he thought."

Minho plucked his spear back from beast and leveled its dripping blade at her. "Why would you do that?"

Rose's throat went dry. "Later. We have to—"

"No, now, Rose!" Minho's voice ping-ponged along the corridor, and she flinched.

"You don't understand," she answered, her voice already breaking. "I used to work for the Creators, and—"

"Not that. I don't care about any of that klunk." Minho closed the gap between them and garnered every ounce of her attention. For a moment, she forgot every boy waiting for her at the Cliff—it was only Rose and the strength of Minho's emotions. "Don't you know what it did to me watching those Doors close on you?"

"I know, and I'm sorry."

"No, you don't. You don't know. I love you, you stupid shuck-face," he shouted, and Rose jerked back in surprise. Softer now, his eyes dappled with the echoes of stars, he repeated, "I love you."

Minho's fingers gripped her backpack straps as he hoisted her onto her toes and smothered her lips with his. Rose was dizzy and confused and overwhelmed, but she kissed him back fiercely.

He loved her. Minho loved her. Despite her best attempts to sabotage everything, he loved her.

He pulled back suddenly, leaving Rose's lips as cold and wanting as she had left him that morning. "Just so you know, that doesn't make any of this okay. I'm still really pissed at you. What the shuck happened today?"

"I—I made a deal with the Creators," she whispered. "Me for all of you."

One of his eyes twitched and he staggered back. "What would possess you to do something so shucking stupid?"

"I was trying to save everybody! You would have done the same, don't act like you wouldn't."

Minho paced the hall, his footsteps echoing more emphatically than his voice. "No way. I'm not that jacked in the head."

"You're so full of it," Rose said. "If that were true, why are you in here right now, in the dead of night, alone, looking for me?"

When he didn't answer, Rose sighed. "You shouldn't have come. None of you should have. It's what they wanted all along, and I was too stupid to see it. We have to get everyone out of here, and we can't go back, not now, not ever. There's one other way out."

"Always knew there would be," Minho said, "but we could never find it."

"The Cliff. It's over the Cliff."

The Keeper rolled his eyes and sighed. "Great, another suicide plan."

Rose grabbed his hand and dragged Minho through the Maze until he finally shook her loose and darted ahead of her. "This is my Maze, remember? Try and keep up."

It wasn't long until they heard the all-too-familiar click-and-whir of another Griever behind them.

 _Son of a bitch._

"Come on, get the lead out, Doc!" Minho encouraged as he guided them through a series of narrow passageways she had never seen before.

Rose ventured a glance behind her. The Griever was right on their heels, somehow nimble enough not to catch a single lethal embellishment on the ever-encroaching walls. Its gelatinous body constricted to give it more of a wheeled shape than a balled one and it gathered speed.

Up ahead, Minho shouted, "Left, left! Move those legs, Doc!"

"I'm trying…"

"Need me to carry you?" Minho quipped as they rounded another bend until she finally pulled up alongside him.

Rose jerked him to her side as a saw blade whizzed down and sliced through the air where he had just been. "Looks like I should carry you."

Minho grunted. "We gotta lose this shucking thing."

"Divide and conquer?" she asked, glancing up at a stepped wall.

"Make it quick."

Rose broke right and scaled the first block with the help of a strong leap and the second with the help of some sturdy ivy. The last block required brute force, and she tapped into the last of her reserves to hoist herself over it. By the time she reached the top, she was a few legs behind Minho and the monster, and Rose dove forward until the Griever was almost beneath her.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of rocks she had collected and hurled one onto the Griever, then another and another.

"Hey, ugly, up here!" she shouted.

Another three rocks clattered off its back. Still nothing, and she was out of rocks. Rose had one option left.

She raised her rusty blade over her shoulder and hurled it downward like a javelin. Though it was far from a killing blow, the ragged metal pierced the Griever's side. The armored slug reared up on its chunky tail, much taller than Rose had anticipated, and her heartrate spiked.

But Minho was ready. He ran his spear through the monster's soft underbelly up through its head and a river of goo surged from the gaping wound. As the beast collapsed, Minho placed the killing blow just as Rose had taught him, and the contraptions sputtered and drooped.

Rose slid down a curtain of vines, the pain in her wounded palms searing but reminding her they had just survived not one Griever but two.

And then four more Griever screams chorused in the night from every corner of the Maze.

The pair rounded the last few turns, fear and relief both smashing against the rocks in Rose's heart. She hoped the other Gladers had made it. She hoped she could get them all out. She hoped she wasn't steering them into another trap. She hoped they wouldn't hate her as much as she hated herself.

But this was the Maze, and this was where hope came to die.


	27. Chapter 27

**Chapter Twenty-Seven**

 _Mad Soul Child & Chung Chae Woong – Fate_

 _Bonus jam: Steve Aoki – Back to Earth (ft. Fall Out Boy)_

* * *

Even Rosalind, the architect of emotions, had never meant for anyone to die—it was the whole reason she had invented the Protocol. She wanted to compel them, to get them to fall in love, to give them something bigger to fight for.

But Rosalind was just as much of a naïve fool as Rose was.

The others had made it to the Cliff.

So had four Grievers.

Grunts and hisses joined with the clash of metal against wood into a symphony of battle. Most of the men had managed to hold their own against the onslaught, but Omar slumped beside the Cliff's edge and Jonas laid prone on the concrete—an afterthought, a speedbump.

Newt and Thomas took point against the closest Griever and sheltered Chuck behind them, who jabbed his own spear even though the others kept him too far back to make contact. Gally ping-ponged between different groups against bookending monsters until, slowly, the two groups merged into one tight-knit circle. Claws snapped and drills buzzed as their primitive weapons shattered before the might of WICKED's technology.

At the apex of the war zone, Alby battled a Griever with only two long, rusty swords for backup. He pivoted and dodged and struck as elegantly as a dancer. Even in the dark of the night, sweat gleamed on his brow as he spun and thrust his weapons into soft Griever meat.

"Damn," Rose muttered as she watched their leader seamlessly parry a scorpion tail capped with a mace.

Minho nodded in agreement. "Why do you think no one challenges him to be Leader? Even Gally can't keep up with that. Wait until he breaks out the bow and arrow."

The creature hadn't backed down but it couldn't advance either, and it wailed from some unseen mouth loud enough to make everyone wince.

The distraction was just enough to allow another Griever to pierce through the protective ranks of the largest Glader circle and strike down one dark-haired boy. It happened so fast that, at first, Rose couldn't tell who it was, but on the ground, flat on his back and kissed by the moonlight, she couldn't mistake Winston's pitted cheeks. His eyes were wide, and they no longer studied the battle but reflected it like glass.

Rose charged blade-first into the fray, hacking and sawing and stabbing—anything to draw attention away from the others. A long, reticulating arm whipped above her, the end tipped with a trifecta of claws punctuated with a syringe bubbling with black liquid. It targeted Rose, and she dodged it but only for a moment before it jerked in the other direction, narrowly missing her again.

Minho fared no better. He used his spear to block three tools of various shades of nightmarish, but a the fourth whizzed toward his side. Before she could even sound the alarm, another spear sliced through the air, sending the latest attacking arm clattering back to its master. The spear spun expertly in a circle before smashing the syringe inside the claw.

Alby leaned back and raised an eyebrow at Rose. "What are you waiting for? Get us the shuck out of here, slinthead."

"Aye-aye, Admiral," she said before she plowed through the melee toward the edge of the Cliff.

At the lip, her certainty wavered. Below her toes was icy blackness, unblemished and unending. This couldn't be the way out, her memory was wrong. If she led the men over it, she'd be leading them to certain death.

Rose glanced over her shoulder and caught sight of Omar, folded over at the waist, his eyes white and wide. She wasn't the only one to notice. Gally darted over to the lifeless lump that used to be a friend and plucked the Runner's sagging spear from his hand.

"What are you doing?" demanded a bewildered Renato.

"Look at him, man," the Builder said firmly. "He doesn't need it anymore."

Renato bared his teeth and unleashed a warrior's cry before he harpooned the nearest Griever with his lance. The monster didn't even register the wound as it wailed away at Frypan, but the Runner withdrew his weapon and jammed again and again and again until a fountain of mustard ooze erupted. The Griever skittered and whirled as it tried to shift focus, but the boys swarmed with the ferocity of fire ants. A few more moments, and the beast had been slain in a deflated lump of putrid flesh.

One Griever down, but their triumph was short-lived as the remaining monsters converged on the victorious Gladers. Their muscles quavered, their strength faltered, but their tenacity held steadfast.

But they would lose. Without a way out, Rose knew they would lose. They were once an army of fifteen—now twelve—against three Grievers who weren't programmed to tire. They would lose, and they would lose spectacularly.

As if he could hear her thoughts, Ender dropped his weapon and turned to face the woman on the precipice. His chest heaved, but his gaze was sharper than any Griever weapon.

"This is all your fault," he seethed.

It was practically whispered beneath the clatter of battle, but that didn't matter. Rose heard him as clearly as a pin dropping in an empty room.

"You killed Omar and Winston and Jonas, and you won't stop until you kill all of us, you stupid bitch."

And then he charged her.

Ender took off with the force of a missile, and he would not miss his mark. His eyes were black and sighted directly on Rose, and she could do nothing to stop it. She couldn't move. Every limb had been paralyzed by fear or regret or acceptance. She deserved this.

Ender's shoulder hammered into Rose's stomach as he drove her forward. Nothing could stop his rage as barreled into her and propelled them both over the Cliff.

Rose fell. She fell forever. She was dead.

She didn't remember her first death, but she remembered her second.

* * *

She was surrounded by starlight and blackness in a verdant meadow singed with fuchsia flames, undulating in a breeze she couldn't feel.

So this was the afterlife? She pictured something more dramatic, maybe her mother's face or her baby sister now grown and running to greet her. She certainly didn't picture a waterfall of tacky vines, the squeal of Grievers, or Frypan's bearded face covered in spittle.

"Rose!" he shouted again.

"Are you dead, too?" she mumbled.

Frypan scowled. "Not yet and neither are you."

Rose growled and started to roll up but caught herself at the last second as she teetered to the right. She was on some sort of platform camouflaged a dozen feet down from the lip of the Cliff, half of her dangling over its edge. The back of her head was splitting, as though it were an egg in an iron skillet.

"You okay?" the Cook asked.

"Define 'okay'."

"Can you move?"

Rose lifted her drooping leg onto the platform and scrunched up into a ball. Nothing felt broken—bruised, sure, probably from head to toe, but she could move. "Looks like it."

She glanced around. Everything was seamless ebony punctuated only by the occasion snake of green ivy. She couldn't even see what she was sitting on but it felt like metal. Another one of WICKED's illusions.

No Ender.

He had fallen over the Cliff with her—Rose could still feel his shoulder digging into her chest and his nails scraping her ribs—but he wasn't on the platform.

"Is Ender up there?"

"If that little shit were, I'da pushed him over the edge of myself," Frypan snarled. "Nah, he gone. You see anything down there?"

"No, nothing. Give me a minute to check it out."

Rose rolled onto her hands and knees and tentatively scouted the footprint of the invisible platform. Her vision blurred—or would have if she could see anything. Eventually, her fingers glossed over a lip of cool metal, which she followed in a complete loop. It could only be one thing.

A door.

Rose felt around under the eerie veil of blackness until she found a bump and the door zipped open. It was still dark, but it felt like a stone cylinder. And the smell—rancid and wet, just like a Griever's skin. Rose fought the urge to retch. Somewhere inside the cylinder, something glowed.

"Fry, I think—"

"Oh shit!" the Cook yelled before disappearing.

"Fry?" Rose said tremulously to the now-vacant patch of sky above her. Her heart raced as the searing buzz of a chainsaw hacked through the air. "Fry!"

"He's kinda busy," Gally warned as she caught a glimpse of the Builder fending off another needle-tipped claw. "What do ya need, Legs?"

"I think there's a door down here, but there's a keyboard, and I don't remember the code. I need you to get Thomas," she ordered, and for once, Gally didn't argue. He dipped under the Griever's arm and vanished.

In a moment, Thomas was by Rose's side on the platform, a vine tied around his waist and a flashlight in his hand. A dozen small cuts peppered his face but none serious that she could see. Together they slipped through the door and into the cavern below.

The cylinder was more like a long corridor oiled with Griever stench and marred with scars from Griever weaponry. It stretched beyond the point of the flashlight, but Rose didn't need it to know that the way out was right there. If they could just break the lock…

Rose guided Thomas' hand to the keyboard, her fingers steadying his. "Do you remember any of this?"

Thomas shook his head, his eyes wide. "I mean, I've had snippets of words and faces, but none of this, just loads of nonsense. Maybe if I had some time—"

"We don't have time, Thomas."

His gaze shifted to her. "How did you expect to do this yourself?"

"I didn't," she said, flinching under his scrutiny. "They were just supposed to let me in—that was the deal."

"Yeah, well, I think the deal is shucking off, don't you?"

Rose laid a hand on Thomas' shoulder and squeezed. "I know, I screwed up, and I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you, but we need to get out first. If anyone can figure this thing out, it's you, Thomas."

"But I don't have any idea what it could be!" he protested as he eyed the keys warily.

"You can do this, Thomas. You helped design this place."

"I _what_?" he exclaimed.

 _Damnit_. Rose knew Thomas had been remembering things, and she'd hoped his role in the Maze had since been added to the list of fragments. Yet another egregious miscalculation.

"Shit! No time," she said as she glanced up to a soul-tearing scream that shredded the air. "I have to go help the others. Trust me when I say you know this place better than anyone else. If anyone can open that door, it's you. Just focus. I believe in you."

He knitted his brow while he studied the keyboard as though he didn't recognize the letters. Rose gave him a firm slap of encouragement across his back and took off toward the vine Thomas had slid down.

When she climbed back up, Rose found utter carnage. Flashlights skittered like fireflies in a tornado and a discarded torch fizzled in a corner, lending an eerie warmth to cold death. The boys were divided across the length of the Cliff, easy pickings for the three remaining Grievers. Jonas was now face down and crumpled like an old sock, and something or someone had kicked Winston aside, a flashlight spotlighting the grisly slash in his neck and winking off his favorite 10-inch knife now useless at his feet.

Arrows hissed through the air as Alby took point at the top of mountain of felled Griever flesh and attempted to draw one Griever away from a scattering clutch of boys. Minho was right, he was a sight to behold, proud and fearless as he defended his Gladers.

Beside him, Rose spotted Anil laying on his back, coughing furiously. She raced to his side, skidding on her knees, and grabbed his hand. "Anil! Anil, I'm here. Where are you hurt? I can fix it. I can fix it!"

His head rolled to the side, his ever-warm eyes now chilling as they struggled to bring her into focus. "You are a good Med-jack, my little Rose Bush, but today I need a Bagger."

Anil guided her hand to his abdomen, which had been savaged by some kind of inconceivable blade, with only his waist and spine to hold his two halves together.

"No," she said as her voice broke. "Someone can fix this. Clint! Clint!"

"Do not cry. This is the best kind of death for me, for it is in service to a friend. This is my new beginning. I am only sad I cannot see how this chapter ends. Namaste, my little Rose Bush."

Anil's fingers slackened in Rose's as his eyes drifted shut. He was smiling, Heaven help the crazy slinthead, he was smiling. Anil was literally the only person in the world Rose could think of who would celebrate his own death.

Rose kneeled there, stunned for only a moment before blind rage overtook her. A strange sound issued from her throat, not quite a growl or a scream and more feral than either. She grabbed a rusty saw-blade cast off from one of the Grievers and charged for the closest beast, hacking recklessly through its blubber. She wouldn't stop until she had sliced it from end-to-end as it had done to her friend. It would pay. They all would pay.

Hunks of greasy flesh rained down around Rose. Still, she chopped. Rivers of fluorescent yellow oil pooled around her ankles as the monster deflated. Still, she chopped. One last guttural howl gurgled through its body as the arms retracted or collapsed. Still, she chopped. Her rage petered out halfway through the creature until Rose was left surrounded putrid gray skin and empty of any emotion except overwhelming failure.

"Rose, are you all right?" Newt asked gently.

"No," she whispered, her voice muffled by the blubbery insulation around her. "Anil's dead. Omar and Jonas, too. And Winston. I screwed up, Newt. I tried to save you, and I fucking screwed up."

Rose laughed bitterly. She was just as bad as WICKED—hell, she was WICKED. Had she ever stopped?

"Come on out of there," Newt urged as he offered her his hand. "Plenty of time to worry about that klunk later. Only two Grievers left. We can do this, Rose, but we have to do it together."

Rose grabbed his hand as he helped her over the oil slick of mustardy blood. Half-heartedly, she said, "Let's kick some Griever ass."

"For Anil," Newt added.

"For Anil."

The two of them flanked the backside of the nearest Griever, completing the ring of Gladers around it. It pinched and stabbed and sliced with unfocused abandon as the boys continued their assault. One well-placed swing of a metal arm sent Jeff flying backward until he thunked against a wall and slid down.

"Hurry the shuck up, Thomas!" Minho shouted over the Cliff.

"If it's so easy, you do it!" Thomas volleyed back, his voice echoing up from the stone pipe.

"He's probably taking his time on purpose, stalling for his WICKED buddies."

"Cram it, Gally," Newt ordered as he swatted back a blade.

"Keep fighting!" Alby demanded loud as ever as he advanced between two scorpion-like tails framing the head of the beast. As he moved forward, his staff twirled between them, thunking off steel and glass while his gaze focused on the lumpy rectangle at the crown of its anterior.

"Renato! Cover Alby," Frypan ordered as he kicked away a snapping claw.

The dark-haired boy weaved around the whizzing appendages with the agile grace of the Runner he was before wrangling one tail with a rope of vine and looping it around a nearby spike.

"Little help here," Renato sing-songed, and Rose darted to his side to help him cinch the vine tight.

Nearly a clear path to the control box now as long as Alby could keep clear of the other reticulating tail.

Alby jabbed at the panel until he'd traced its perimeter and then wedged the point of his staff underneath it. He leveraged all of his weight on the end of the spear until they heard a shuddering crack.

"Watch his back! Watch his back!"

Rose couldn't tell who was shouting, and she made out the words too late.

The Griever collapsed, but with it, so did Alby. He slid down the hill of slick skin into Newt's waiting arms. Several Gladers and Rose raced to their leader's side to find the same stoic face they all feared in the Glade.

"Ugh, not again. What're you slintheads fussin' about? Get back to work! Day ain't over yet."

Rose pushed the others aside as she inspected the damage. Alby had been stung, but worse, the claw had also managed to slice through his right thigh. Even through the blackness, Rose could see the luminous gray of bone.

"No, no, no." This is what had killed Omar, and she hadn't been able to save him. Rose covered what she could of the wound with her hands and screamed, "Goddamn it, where is Clint?"

In a moment, Gally joined her, kneeling to cover the other half of gash with his hands, too. He tried to steady his breath as he said, "Clint's gone, Rose."

"That's not possible," she answered dumbly.

"Saw it with my own eyes. Griever tossed him over the Cliff earlier."

Rose shook her head emphatically. "Well, did anybody go down and look for him?"

"Down where?" Gally snorted. "There's nowhere to go unless you want a death sentence, too. He's gone. Gone forever."

Rose thought about punching Gally square in his potato nose, but she couldn't risk him losing his seal on Alby's wound. Instead, she offered Gally her nastiest snarl. "It's impossible, you moron, it can't go on forever. Somebody has to go down there and look for him. He could be hurt and alone and waiting for one of us to rescue him."

"I can't lose any more friends," Gally stated with the stoniness of the Walls. "Clint's gone, and I ain't allowing anyone here to go looking for him."

Somehow Clint's disappearance hurt more than watching the others die. Rose had nursed Cat, treated Omar, watched Winston fall in battle, and said goodbye to Anil. But Clint was just gone. No explanations, no treatments, no second chances, no closure. Her mentor and friend—gone. There was a void in her heart as large as the Cliff, and nothing could fill it up.

Nine of them left. Gally was right, they couldn't lose any more.

"Gally! Newt!" shouted Renato somewhere behind them. "Get your shucking butts over here. Now!"

"Sorry, Legs, I gotta go. Alby, you are truly King of the Shuck-faces, and I mean that from the heart."

"Good that," Alby grunted with a wisp of a coveted smile.

"Was that supposed to be some sort of buggin' compliment?" Newt said.

"What?" Alby coughed. "You all a bunch of huge shuck-faces and I was your king."

"'Are,'" amended Newt with a stern glare through foggy eyes. They clasped hands, and Newt enveloped Alby's between his. "Want me to tell Minho anything?"

"Yeah, tell him to slim it. I can hear his loud mouth from here."

Newt gave a soft laugh and a softer slap of Alby's hand before he nodded and left his leader.

"No more friends," Gally whispered in Rose's ear after she finished tying a tourniquet at the top of Alby's thigh. He wiped Alby's blood on his pants before charging to Renato's aid along with every remaining Glader.

It was largest Griever of them all, nearly twice the size of any other Rose had seen that night, and the bigger it was, the more weapons it could hold. It was a testament to how strong the boys were that they weren't all dead already under its humongous buzz saw.

Minho and Jeff hammered away at the bases of two of its impromptu legs as Renato and Gally hoisted one spear up to keep a heavily-pronged spike from sticking them all. Newt and Chuck rammed a lance repeatedly into the faceless head of blubber as Frypan dodged rusty landmines on its back in search of its control box.

And still the thing looked only mildly inconvenienced. If it had eyes, they would have been staring at Rose, and if it had a mouth, it would have been slobbering for her. She could feel its attention needle-sharp on her skin.

"We can really use you over here, Doc," Minho growled as he braced against a steel leg.

"Go," Alby coughed again through fading consciousness. "I'll be fine."

Rose grimaced. "Let me just—"

With the last of his impressive strength, Alby mustered his favorite unwavering glower and snapped, "That's an order, you stubborn shankette."

"I'll be back for you. Just hang tight." Rose bent down to kiss his cheek, trading droplets of her tears on his brow for droplets of his blood on her lips. Slowly, she wobbled up, every limb sticky.

Rose was covered in blood. Alby's, Anil's, Winston's, Omar's, Jonas'. Rosie's and her mother's, even her father's. Panic rooted in her chest and turned her limbs porcelain. She was ready to shatter.

 _It's okay, it's okay, it's okay,_ she tried to soothe, but it was useless. She was frozen.

"Rose!" a voice boomed, feral and desperate, but she couldn't even turn to it.

 _Thuck thuck thuck_.

Something rocketed by Rose's face, glancing off her cheek and leaving a neat line of stinging red.

Great, her third death… Maybe this would be the one that stuck.

Rose ran her hands down her chest. No holes that she could find—big as it was, the Griever was a terrible shot.

"I'm alive!" she trumpeted in disbelief. "I'm alive!"

Newt exhaled sharply. "That's good news. Now, I've got some bad…"

And then he sank to his knees.

"Newt!" It was a collective cry, full of panic and shock and outright fear.

"I guess my children aren't so ungrateful after all. How bad is it?" he asked Rose, but before she could answer, Minho interrupted.

"Quit your bellyaching. It's a scrape, you big baby. An easy fix as soon as we get out of here." But the Keeper's voice was shaking. Rose had never heard fear in Minho's voice, and the Griever may as well have shot her for as deeply as it penetrated her.

Rose joined Newt on her knees to examine his wound. A cluster of three metal rods, thin as pencils, protruded from his abdomen. She had read enough books in the Med-hut, too many books for her own good now, to know it had likely pierced his liver. If Newt had any hope of survival, they needed to get out now—to a real doctor with real medicine, not some damn home remedies made by a stupid, know-it-all teenager.

"I'm so sorry, Newt," Rose whispered through sobs. "I don't know what to do. I don't know how to fix it. I'm useless. I'm weak."

Newt brushed his fingertips under her jaw, catching a waterfall of tears and wiping them away. "We all have weaknesses, Rose. You're mine."

"What?" she managed through another sob.

"Rose, I'm in love with you.

"Wow, that does feel loads better," Newt announced rather cheerfully before he thunked forward against her shoulder. "Sorry for the bad timing, but I figured what the hell, can't get bloody worse than this."

Rose's mouth went dry. She should say something to him—he deserved some sort of reply—but she'd been struck dumb by his confession as well as his sacrifice. In place of words, her hand roved up through Newt's hair as she soothed him against her, and she kissed the crown of his head before he collapsed entirely, bringing her down with him.

"You guys, I think I got it!" Thomas proclaimed as he crested the lip of the Cliff. But his smile fell the moment he spotted the tangle of crimson and blonde hair on the ground.

"Rose? Newt?" Thomas said urgently. Rose looked up; Newt didn't.

Thomas raced toward his friend's limp body, his news completely forgotten. He skidded to a stop beside the pair and drew Newt's head into his lap. "What the hell happened?"

"I— He— The Griever—" Rose said, unwilling to unwind herself from her best friend.

"Newt? Newt, can you hear me? It's Thomas. It's time to go. We need you, man. We need you to lead us out of here. Come on, get up." Thomas slipped his hands under Newt's arms to scoop him upright, but the blonde was more ragdoll than man now. Still, Thomas refused to let him go. "I am _not_ leaving you here, you understand me? Wake up!"

Thomas' voice was so bitter and furious that Rose winced at the sound.

And it caught the attention of the slimy beast behind them. The Griever spun in a fast circle and, using its scorpion tail as a whip, scattered the remaining Gladers to the far corners of the Cliff. Completely unencumbered at last, it squared off with Rose, clacking each set of claws that studded its back. It was coming for her.

No, not for her. WICKED needed her alive.

Thomas and Newt.

"No more friends," she hissed reaching out for Thomas, but it wasn't in time.

Funny, Rose would have thought the sound of her world fracturing would have been ear-piercing, but it was a wet rip, a soft hiss, like a boot pulled from sucking mud.

Thomas and Newt had been thrown to the side as Minho stood rigid, impaled on a scorpion tail through his abdomen.

A sickening squelch echoed between Rose's ears as a silver spike protruded through Minho and out his back. As the articulated tail clanked back satiated, the spike disappeared, leaving only a red, wet hole in its wake. Minho's hands crept down and fingered the edge of the wound numbly.

"Well, shucking shuck," her panther growled as he collapsed to his side. "At least no one will notice my other scar now."

Somehow her feet remembered to move, and Rose dove forward. She pulled off her shirt and balled it up to staunch his wound. Minho didn't even have the energy to flinch as she jammed the fabric into the hole like a cork in a bottle.

"What the hell, you idiot?" she shouted through a veil of tears.

He shrugged his mouth. "We all know you and Thomas are the ones who are going to get us out of this klunkhole. I mean, you shanks did in two months what I couldn't do in two years."

"Oh, now you're humble. Stuff it, you liar. You did it so everyone would think you're a hero."

"Did it work?" he wheezed.

"Yes," Rose laughed, a savage, astringent thing that choked her.

"You're coming with us," Thomas insisted.

Minho lifted Rose's shirt from his wound and studied the gore indifferently. "Yeah, probably not. But it's okay. You shuckheads were probably worth it."

"Thomas!" Renato screamed. "Thomas, we need you! Right shucking now!"

They all looked to the survivors, the paltry few boys now pinned between the wall and the Cliff with the Griever edging ever closer. Chuck was scampering back with Jeff, Frypan, and Gally struggling to cover dozens of murderous metal appendages.

"Go, I've got him," Rose urged.

"Yeah," their Keeper laughed darkly, "she's got me."

Thomas gripped Minho's hand tightly. "I'll be back for you. We're still getting out of here. _All of us_."

Minho nodded and clamped his friend's shoulder. "Huh, when you say it, I almost believe it."

With that, Thomas darted over to the others' aid, and Minho sagged back onto his elbows. He looked at Rose and then to her chest and smiled, a hint of a crescent adorning his cheek. "Aren't you proud of me? I didn't even make one comment that you're shirtless."

Rose laughed through her tears and wrapped her free hand around the back of Minho's neck, twirling a lock of hair around her finger. "I hate that I love you."

His eyes widened slightly. "Say that again."

"I hate you."

"Shuck-face," he mumbled drowsily.

"I love you."

And Rose did. Insanely, madly, irrationally—the only kind of love a person could have with him. Minho was in her heart as much as he was in her blood.

"Told you. That's why we have Minho Rule Three," he breathed through a smile as his arms gave out and his eyes shut.

Rose kissed him desperately, over and over again. Wasn't that in some fairytale book she'd remembered in her dream? Wasn't this how she could wake her prince? She kissed him again, but Minho's eyes did not open. Another kiss and still nothing. She leaned in again, but this time Thomas jerked her back.

"Rose, we've only got a second before that thing recovers," he said, gesturing toward the Griever wheeling on its back. "I got the door open, but it leads to a long hallway. I don't know how we're going to be able to carry the others without more help. No one's coming."

Rose looked to Minho again, to his still lips and slowing breaths.

 _No more friends…_

"They won't," she hissed. "No one's going to come for us unless we make them come."

"Yeah, but they're the ones killing us. I don't think there's much here they care about."

"There's something," she said in a voice not her own. It was flinty and bloodthirsty and without an ounce of remorse. "There's the Cure."

They had fallen all around her. Blood, blood everywhere. Red eyes watching.

Rose felt as small as the girl in her memories, as small as the mouse crushed underfoot. Nothing had changed from that fateful day a decade ago—the only thing she brought was carnage.

 _I sense death surrounding you…_

She was steeped in it.

"Stop," she whispered, not to Thomas but to WICKED. Rose's voice was gaining momentum and building to a marvelous crescendo until it was ready to burst, until her eyes were as red as a beetle blade's. "Stop this right now! Get out here and save them, goddamnit. You may not need them, but I do, and you need me. I remember everything. I remember my experiment and my conclusions. So if you don't get someone out here and save every last one of my friends, I'll take away the only thing you care about—I'll take away the Cure."

Rose raced toward Winston's cold, lonely knife—the same one that had made her faint months ago—and put it to her scar. The blade bit instantly into her skin. She could smell the stink of Griever bile on the metal and felt the sting of the oil mixing with her blood. This time she would finish what her father couldn't. This time she wasn't afraid. She wasn't afraid anymore of anything except losing the men she loved.

Rose stared defiantly into the scarlet eyes of a beetle blade and pressed the blade deeper, sending more teardrops of blood cascading down her bare chest.

"They die, I die."

There was a heavy squeal of rusty metal hinges and the thunder of a dozen footsteps in perfect synchronicity. Rose glanced up in time to see line of helmeted soldiers ascend the lip of the Cliff and descend on ropes from some invisible floating fortress above. There was a stiff puff of air and her own clipped scream, and then—nothingness.


	28. Chapter 28

**Chapter Twenty-Eight**

 _Zayde Wolf – Born Ready_

 _A/N: FYI, it'll add another layer to have read_ The Fever Code _for this chapter, but if you haven't, you'll be okay._

* * *

Drip.

Bridget tucked her knees up tighter under her chin and wrapped her arms around her shins. She had made herself as small as possible, but the chill was in her bones—it had been for seven years now.

Drip.

How long had she been down here? She couldn't tell. The hallway was dimly lit and non-descript, just more concrete expanding in every direction along with hissing pipes covered in condensation. Bridget wasn't even sure where she was going, let alone how she had ended up here, but she knew she was lost.

It wouldn't be long before her tinkering job on the cameras outside her room wore off and someone noticed she was missing. If she didn't find a way out before then and they found her, well, she had seen what WICKED did to people who tried to escape.

After years of planning, Bridget had thought she could easily outsmart them. She was small, she was wily, she was nimble. She thought after a childhood spent in a world of ashes and opportunists, navigating abandoned buildings and dodging predators on the streets, she could escape this place easily enough.

Wrong. So very wrong.

Now she was lost and waiting for her captors to find her and correct her behavior.

" _The world will thank us later._ You'll _thank us later, Rosalind. We just have to correct your behavior first…"_

How often had she heard those same words over the past few years? They were Dr. Thorne's favorite, even if Bridget wasn't. Dr. Thorne relished correcting Bridget.

Drip.

Thud, thud.

Bridget peeked up over her knees. They had found her sooner than expected.

She followed a pair of jean-covered legs up to a faded t-shirt and finally an indifferent face, but not the one she was expecting.

She recognized him instantly. The Boy with the Griever. She could never forget him even though she didn't know his name. Dark hair, high cheekbones, smooth skin, teardrop eyes.

Under the watchful guard of Dr. Thorne and her fellow Psych, Dr. Espina, Bridget had been made to watch the boy's "lesson" four times that day while they monitored every flinch she made and every tear she shed as the hybrid demon-slug-machine _thing_ brought the boy within an inch of his life over and over again. At the time, Dr. Thorne had never even explained why they'd done it; they'd just done it and made Bridget watch. Four times. She'd always assumed there had been a fifth where they put the poor kid out of his misery but saved Bridget from watching it.

But instead, he stood over her, head cocked slightly to the side, by all outward appearances, completely fine.

"What happened to your neck?"

Bridget rubbed her scar and bowed her head, hoping a deluge of red curls would be enough make her vanish from his keen gaze.

"Forget it. You don't have to tell me." The boy looked up and down the corridor and then back at her huddled frame. "You alone?"

She nodded.

Drip.

He sat down beside her, gaze fixed on the opposite wall. "They give you a name?"

"Rosalind, but my name is Bridget."

The boy stared at her. "If they tell you it's Rosalind, it's Rosalind. Better not fight it. Haven't see you around before. You part of Group B?"

"I don't know what I am. They keep me next to the Psychs. I've never seen any other kids here, but I've seen you before."

His eyes widened, the first real expression she had seen from him. "Me? When?"

Bridget cast her eyes downward, and her voice stuttered at the memory of a boy ratcheted to a chair, seconds away from four savage deaths. "When they used—"

"That doesn't mean you know me," he snapped suddenly.

"I didn't say I knew you, just that I'd seen you, jeez," she grumbled, wondering why he had sat down if he was just going to be mean to her.

"How long have you been out?"

Bridget shrugged.

"Well, it's time to go back."

"I don't wanna," she said.

He leaned his head back until it thunked against the wall. "Look, chickie, there's no way outta here."

Bridget did her best to sound dumb. "What?"

"You were trying to get out, right?"

She hid her face in her hair again.

"Whatever dumb idea you have, just forget it. It ain't worth it. They'll always find you, and when they bring you back…" His eyes were so far away, farther than the last star Bridget could remember seeing years ago, and his voice was hollow. "Well, it ain't worth it. It's better here."

"It doesn't feel better." As his words sank in, Bridget grew more and more indignant. This kid wasn't the boss of her—no one was. She hadn't asked for his opinion. He didn't know the first thing about her or her life. "And if I wanna go, I'll go. You don't know me either."

The boy was quiet for a long while before he finally shifted into a crouch and finagled his arms behind her back and under her knees. He grunted as he clutched her tightly to him, his legs straining to push him upright.

"What are you doing?" Bridget shouted.

He ignored her question for his own. "Which way?"

"Put me down!"

"If you've seen me before, you know you don't want them to catch you out here."

"I don't care, I've survived worse than this," Bridget said as she thrashed like a fish in his grasp. "And anyway, who are you to tell me what I can and can't do? You're out right now, aren't you?"

But the boy's arms squeezed her tighter to him, and suddenly it became less of a kidnapping and more of a weird hug. He looked at her with narrowed eyes and a thin-set mouth. In a near whisper, he said, "They know I'm not that stupid anymore, but they don't know how smart I am. One day, when they least expect it, I'm gonna get out. I'm gonna get everyone out, and if you play your cards right—and don't do anything this stupid again—maybe I'll come get you, too."

Bridget's brow furrowed. "Why?"

He shrugged with her in his arms. "You're not bad-looking. It would sure beat looking at a bunch of dudes all day."

Bridget thought again about wriggling free and taking off—after a good punch to the kid's gut—but, at the same time, she couldn't stop the rush of heat that flooded her cheeks. With each passing second that the boy cradled her against his chest, the fight went out of her, replaced with curiosity and a bit of relief—or was it some kind of weird happiness? Bridget was warm for the first time in a long time.

"You can put your arms around my neck, you know. Would make this a lot easier."

"Oh—okay." Bridget complied, her fingers interlacing at the nape of his neck as she secured herself to him. Her face was in his shoulder now, and she worried he might think she was nuzzling him, but he said nothing. His t-shirt was soft against her cheek even if the muscle beneath it was hard.

"You're strong," she mumbled red-faced into him.

"I know." His voice was so even, like it wasn't a compliment but a recorded fact. "When I'm ready to break us out of here, I'll be even stronger. Will you come with me then?"

"I don't know."

"Sure you don't." Sounded like he thought that was another fact.

Finally, she recognized a few landmarks, and Bridget directed him down a couple more corridors—the long way, but he didn't need to know that—until, at last, they reached Room 217X. He placed her on her feet and studied her face for a moment.

Did he expect something from her? A kiss or something?

Everyone she had ever known in the time since her family had died had expected something from her. Nobody helped Bridget for free. On the streets, she had to pilfer or produce, distract or dazzle, and if she didn't come home with whatever Mr. Sunshine had ordered, he would cast her and the other orphans back onto the streets where he'd found them. WICKED was no different. In exchange for food and a bed, they expected perfect scores, perfect answers, perfect performances—perfection. When she wasn't perfect, she lost both.

Bridget could always figure out what others wanted from her. But not this kid.

Best to be blunt. "Are your looking for something from me?"

He stared at her for a long moment, as though the question confused him. "Just don't be stupid anymore, Bridget."

The boy was risking himself saying her true name—and he damn well knew it. The cameras were probably back on by now, and if they heard him… If they saw him here... With her…

Bridget had been isolated for a reason. WICKED expected perfection, and this encounter had ended that. She shivered at the thought of the consequences.

The boy wanted her to trust him, and Bridget realized she did.

"Thanks," she fumbled as she rubbed her hands together, trying to maintain the last of his warmth under her skin.

The boy shrugged and opened her door. "Whatever. You can thank me properly when we can all see the sun again."

He shoved her inside and grabbed the knob before Bridget shouted, "Hey! I don't know your name."

"Prince Charming," he replied before he pulled her door shut.

* * *

Rose awoke to the rhythmic beep of machines and a breathy huff that sounded like a bellow stoking a fire. There was a buzz overhead, too, a flickering electronic sound she had heard nearly every moment of every day for a decade—fluorescent lights. She pinched her eyes tighter shut at first as she prepared for the onslaught of artificial brilliance above her.

A murmur issued beside her bed, something like "Get the Chancellor."

Rose rolled onto her side and propped her body up before immediately collapsing back onto the bed.

"Easy, Roz," said a feminine voice before a warm hand curled around Rose's arm. "Don't sit up too fast or you'll hurt yourself."

Rose ignored the voice and pushed up again, but as soon as she did, her head spun and throbbed and screamed all at the same time, and she nearly passed out from the pain. She clamped her temples between her hands, trying to steady the whirligig inside her skull. After a moment, Rose opened her eyes.

She knew it would be bright, but she didn't expect it to be blinding. Her new world was white at first, brilliant and all-encompassing, before it tempered to its usual sallow gray and beige. She was in a concrete box with a fixed window on three of the walls, two of which were curtained and one that looked out into a network of hallways. The rest of her room was dressed up like a hospital room, with a half-dozen machines tethered to Rose's arms, two chairs—one empty, one full—and movable table with a pitcher of water and a glass.

The occupied chair seated a girl of about seventeen or eighteen with eyes of blue flame and cascades of onyx hair. Her pink lips curled into a relieved smile. "Hi, Roz."

Rose could only mouth her name. "Teresa."

Despite the needles of pain that stabbed along Rose's spine, the girls embraced fiercely.

"I knew you were too stubborn to die. Again," Teresa said.

Rose tried to speak, but her voice was weak and her throat ached. Her hand reached for her neck and found her scar covered by a bandage. Teresa lowered Rose's hand from her neck and squeezed it.

"The pain's from the breathing tube. They removed it yesterday, so you're going to be pretty sore for a while. Sorry about that. But Chancellor Paige will be so happy you're awake! How's your head?"

As if in response, Rose's body swayed backward before Teresa caught her and eased Rose back on her pillow. "Still pushing yourself to your limits with no thought for your health. Good to see nothing's changed with you, Roz."

But everything had changed. The knowledge came with the resonance of a thunderclap. Rose knew everything. She was Rose. She was Rosalind. She was Bridget. It was like someone had turned on floodlights in her mind, and they illuminated everything as it always had been. There was no more wall in her memories. Instead, it was like the three copies of herself were layered on transparencies, almost lining up and yet noticeably divergent.

She remembered her parents—when they were alive and happy. She remembered that day on the dock with her mother. She remembered riding on her father's shoulders. She remembered Mr. Whitlock shooting him in the head. She remembered the Whitlocks healing her only to succumb to the Flare four months later. She remembered Mr. Sunshine scooping her starving corpse out of a gutter. She remembered WICKED buying her from him while he waved at with that "thanks for doing business" smile he always offered his clients. She remembered her training with the Psychs and her private mentoring with Ava. And she remembered the Boy with the Griever.

"Where are my friends?" Rose demanded.

Teresa pressed her lips together, as though she was wrestling between the truth or a more palatable lie. "The other Subjects? They're with Janson. Depending on what happens with you, they'll be moved to the Scorch Trials."

 _Depending on what happens…_

"Thomas?"

"Tom is fine. Pissing everybody off down there, especially the Assistant Director, but what else could you really expect? I think he held Dr. Mei hostage at one point until they told him you were okay."

Rose wanted to smile at the image, especially since she now remembered how little Dr. Mei cared for the welfare of the kids in the Trials, but she couldn't when Teresa hadn't finished answering her questions. "What about the rest of my friends?"

Teresa hung her head, the black veil of her hair covering her face. "There were a few casualties WICKED couldn't save, but I think you know that."

Rose balled the sheets in her fists. She could barely hear her own voice over the insistent roar of blood in her ears. "Who?"

"I'm not sure of all of them. A9, for sure, A28, A51—"

Rose grabbed the lapel of Teresa's lab coat. "They have names, Teresa! You _knew_ them."

"Sorry, Roz, you know how they are in here, Subject numbers only. I know they disabled Winston's account and Clint's. Omar's, too, and the Indian boy."

"Anil," Rose choked out. "Oh god, Anil."

Teresa rubbed her friend's forearm, but it only brought more tears. "There might have been two or three others, but I could be wrong; I'd need to check the records. I've been with you for two days, so I'm kind of out of it."

"What about Alby?" Rose pictured her leader's stalwart body pumping out tiny geysers of blood, and she gagged, tearing her throat even further.

"Hanging in there."

"And Newt?" Rose's voice ticked up a couple notches. She remembered the flame in his eyes moments away from being snuffed out, the feel of his hair beneath her fingertips as he tumbled into her shoulder.

"He's okay. He's recovering in D-wing, too."

 _Breathe, Rose, breathe._

"Minho."

It was the last word Rose could manage because it took all of her strength to say his name. Her heart rate monitor pattered furiously as her chest tightened and her limbs shook. Teresa grabbed Rose's cheeks between her hands before hugging her close again, and Rose dissolved into a pool of tears. She was drowning in herself, in that ochre sea of sadness that she had waded through every night in the Glade. She couldn't breathe. Rose could barely hear Teresa over her own wrenching sobs.

"He's alive, Roz. Minho is alive."

 _Alive_.

The word felt like sunshine on her face. Of course, he had made it—when had he ever done anything as she had expected? She wanted to laugh for even doubting him. Minho was alive.

Rose's heart rate monitor slowed to a more rhythmic beat and her sobs tempered to gasps of air. "Where are the other Gladers?"

"The rest of Group A? Some officers brought them here along with Group B after they shut down the Maze Trials."

"Even Chuck?"

Teresa smiled. "Even Chuck."

"What about Ender?"

Teresa made a sour face at the name. "Honestly, the fact that you care enough to even ask is why you're a better person than I am."

"Reese," Rose scolded, "he was a kid. We made him that way."

Her friend nodded, her head dipping with a touch of shame as Rose's words sunk in. "Don't know. Somewhere at the bottom of the abyss, but the recovery team hasn't made it down there yet."

It had been two days, and nobody had bothered to go down there and collect the bodies? More tears as Rose pictured the black-and-gray mop of her mentor fanning out into endless darkness. "Clint's still down there. You need to make them go down there right fucking now! Clint fucking deserves it. Teresa, promise me."

Teresa nodded furiously. "I promise."

A long moment of silence unfurled between them as Rose's brain scrambled to catch up to everything she had just heard. She issued silent goodbyes to many of her friends and urgent prayers for the ones who clung tenaciously to this world, but once sadness and relief had given way, all that was left was a raw, ragged anger.

Rose had always loved and trusted Teresa, and her friend had never really tested that trust—only ever exceeded it—but something was niggling at the back of Rose's heart, like a knuckle wrapping on a door with a "Psst!"

"What the hell happened out there, Reese? I made a deal to give them exactly what they wanted, and the next thing I know, my friends were dying. WICKED would have killed them all if I hadn't threatened them."

Teresa bowed her head. "That was me you were talking to when you asked to close the Doors—and I did. I just wanted you back safe so bad I didn't ask anyone, I just did it. I was trying to lead you out, but Dr. Thorne found out and threw me out the observation room. I had no idea what happened after that, I swear. There wasn't anything I could do."

"Would you have?" Rose asked numbly as she stared up at the ceiling.

Teresa furrowed her brow. "Would I have what?"

"If you had stayed in the room, would you have done something to stop her?"

Another long silence, this one pregnant with guilt, maybe even fear. Rose was terrified of what her friend would say, wasn't even sure she could believe anything that came out of the beautiful liar's mouth—which was funny considering Rose could hardly trust herself anymore.

Finally, Teresa looked up from her hands to Rose's profile. Her voice was hushed and gentle. "I don't know. I want to say yes, but I'm not you, Roz. If they had ordered me—" She cut herself off and looked away. "You know me well enough by now to know I'm a rule follower, not a rule breaker."

Rose wanted to believe Teresa more than almost anything else in her life. So she did.

"You did put that key in my head. If Ava knew about that..."

Teresa gave a shallow smile. "Maybe you rubbed off on me a little."

"And you closed the Doors in the first place."

Teresa's smile faded and she fell silent. She was lost somewhere in her own maze, and Rose could only hope that she would one day find her way out.

"So where is Her Majesty?" Rose asked.

"Right here. I'm always right here for you, Rosalind," said a voice from the darkness on the other side of the threshold. A tall woman with a thin frame wrapped in a white lab coat entered the hospital room. The skin around her eyes was taut despite a few fine lines and held an eerie translucence, almost as though Rose could see the muscles beneath. The Chancellor's cheeks were gaunter than Rose remembered, and her pale lips mirrored her exhaustion.

"Is that supposed to make me feel better? Because it doesn't."

"Roz," Teresa gently warned.

The Chancellor took a few more steps into the room, and, after a stern glance at her young employee, softened her gaze for Rose. "I'm sorry about your friends, Rosalind, truly. They were valiant protectors and worthy candidates. WICKED honors their sacrifice."

"Oh really?" Rose spat. "Then why is Clint still at the bottom of the Cliff? Don't talk about them like you know them, like they were anything other than tools for you to use up and throw away."

"You know we never wanted anyone to get hurt."

"But you expected it, even counted on it, or did you forget you just reversed my Swipe? I remember everything, Ava. You killed my friends."

"That doesn't mean I wanted them to die, Rosalind. In the end, that was up to them, wasn't it? If you could have seen their Light Boxes, you would have made the same call."

As if they were shopping for furniture, not weighing and exchanging human lives.

"If you think that, then you never knew me at all. The whole point of my Protocol was to save their lives, not sacrifice more of them. You know more than anybody that without a cure, Immunes are humanity's only chance of survival, and you're just killing them off for fun."

Suddenly, Ava was crouching at Rose's bedside, one hand grasping for something she could almost reach. Her voice was urgent and impassioned as she said, "Fun? You think this is fun for me, Rosalind? This is life and death, the end of the world with one last Hail Mary. It isn't fun—it's necessary.

"But I am humble enough to admit when I was wrong. I had tunnel-vision when it came to the Trials, and were it not for an intrusive young hellcat barging her way into my office waving a red folder, things might have turned out very differently. But you happened, Rosalind, and now we can engineer the Cure thanks to you—thanks to them. Their Killzone levels— _yours_ —were unprecedented. If it's any consolation, your research was sound and your theories were proven definitively."

It wasn't, not even a little.

"History will remember you as a monster," Rose hissed.

"Honestly, Rosalind, sometimes I think you're more juvenile than you were at eleven. I don't care if history remembers me as a monster so long as there _is_ a history to remember me. You understood that once, and I needed you to remember it again."

The Chancellor grabbed the other chair and sat down, crossing her ankles and offering up the sincerest gaze she could. The effect was as sterile as the hospital room. "I apologize for having to resort to such crude methods to induce your memories."

"Let me guess, knockout gas and cabbage?" Rose retorted. "If you wanted to slow me down, you could have just put me to sleep. You didn't have to torture me."

"I never intended to, but I needed you to remember the Flare. I needed you to remember what we are fighting for. You were willing to throw away your entire experiment, the Cure, for a handful of boys."

"They're the future!" the redhead shouted, her voice rebounding off the concrete. Without realizing it, Rose found herself lunging toward the Chancellor, but Teresa grabbed her arm before she could do something drastic.

The corner of Ava's mouth twitched up briefly. "Some, not all. Some of them would have no future without this, or did you forget A5 and A19? This was all from your Protocol, Rosalind, for them. WICKED just adapted your last Directive for one final test to ensure maximum output."

"Lies."

"Don't sell your intelligence short, my dear. It worked. You should be proud. Come now, Rosalind, don't you remember saying that the Subjects were happiest when they sacrificed themselves? Besides, there was always going to be one casualty, wasn't there?" Ava offered the redhead a pointed look and a knowing grin.

Rose gritted her teeth, but that was what the Chancellor wanted. The woman had staked her career, even a coup, on defiance: defying her challengers, defying the Flare, defying Death itself. She thrived on it, lived for, but nothing else. And in that knowledge laid Rose's one weapon.

She gathered her willpower and looked around the room disinterestedly. With a voice as cool as ice, Rose said, "You know, Ava, I promised you in the Maze that I would kill you when I found you, but now that I'm here, I just feel sorry for you. You're so desperate to control what you can't that you're sacrificing the only people who can save the world. You've got all this knowledge and no idea how to use it, so you have to have a bunch of kids solve your problems for you.

"So you can sit there and smile all you want. Go ahead and pat yourself and everyone else here on the back for a job well done. Break out what's left of the world's champagne and get drunk tonight. Because in the morning, when you wake up and you realize you've saved the world, you'll also realize there's nothing and no one left in it for you."

The Chancellor ran her tongue over her teeth, her eyes narrowing almost imperceptibly. She switched her crossed ankles and said nothing until only the chorus of their steady breaths and the whoosh of the machines occupied the space.

"I want to see them," Rose said at last.

"It's not safe for you to move right now, Roz," Teresa whispered into the uncomfortable silence.

"I promise you, they're perfectly safe and being well looked after," Ava asserted.

"You'll forgive me if I don't trust a word from any of you lying bastards."

Ava smacked her lips. "Very well. Since you insist on being obtuse..."

The Chancellor nodded to Teresa, who helped Rose to her feet. The room spun for a minute, jittering shades of grey and white and beige, and she stumbled back before her friend caught her.

"I don't think this is such a good idea," Teresa whispered. "I mean, you just had freaking brain surgery."

"Yeah, I haven't really been known for my good ideas recently, so why not add one more to the list?"

The Chancellor waited just on the other side of the door frame, that narrow pinch still hardening the corners of her eyes but otherwise exhibiting no other emotion. "Say your goodbyes this time, Rosalind."

With that, the woman walked away, her kitten heels clicking emphatically down the hall until she was just a speck—but even the smallest things could be deadly, as the world had learned all too well.


	29. Chapter 29

**Chapter Twenty-Nine**

 _JayMin –_ _너와_

 _A/N: Sorry for the couple-day delay on this chapter. My son's birthday is next weekend, so it's been all-hands at home and will be next weekend, so I can already tell you the last chapter will also be delayed—SORRY! Nearly to the end, folks. This story has changed and grown with Rose, so I hope you're still enjoying it. I have BIG surprises after it's completed as well…_

* * *

Teresa guided her friend down another unremarkable corridor as flashes of everyday data runs and research acquisitions superimposed themselves so Rose could barely tell what she had lived and what she was living now.

"You probably shouldn't have said those things to the Chancellor," Teresa mused as they walked.

"Oh, please, what's she going to do? Kill me?" Rose replied. "It's my Protocol, remember? I already know how this turns out."

Teresa pursed her lips. "You sound just like my Rosalind."

Rose stopped dead in her tracks. Only an hour reborn, and she was already reverting into the scientist she had once been. It terrified her. Rosalind might not have been the cold-hearted clinician her colleagues were, but if she had spent a few more years under their tutorship, she could have been. She had been on the road to becoming a demon, she couldn't allow herself to slip back into the safe embrace of apathy again.

A few more bends and they arrived outside a windowless steel door with a keypad. Rose raised her fingers to the keys, remembering every code to every door she had ever accessed and even some of the ones she shouldn't have, but Teresa stilled her hand.

"Have you seen Thomas yet?" Rose asked.

Teresa bit her bottom lip and gave the smallest of nods.

"He didn't recognize you?"

"It was only for a second, and I didn't really expect him to," Teresa answered, "just kind of hoped."

"He did have his memory Swiped," Rose comforted.

"Didn't stop the two of you from remembering each other, and you only knew each other for a year."

 _Shit._

"Reese, you know Thomas isn't the one for me."

"I know. I think that just makes it hurt more."

Teresa removed her hand from Rose's wrist so she could punch in the password. The door clanked as the locks disengaged and opened with the pop of a seal. Inside was a large room filled with nothing more than a few dozen cots, two rows of bunk beds, and a flock of bruised and dejected boys. It reminded Rose of an old prison Bridget had once spent time in for pickpocketing, but even that one had more warmth than this icebox of all-encompassing stone.

Thomas catapulted forward from a purposeless horde of zombie-eyed Gladers to envelope Rose in his arms.

"Rose! I thought—" he whispered in her ear before he cut himself off. "You're safe. I can't believe it. We were getting ready to break out and find you."

"Of course you were, Thomas," she laughed against his neck. "You've always been you."

Rose pulled back and glanced at the others. She studied the hunched shoulders, drooping heads, and baggy eyes of faces she had come to know so well over the last few months. The Glade might have been a holding pen, but at least it had some illusion of control. Daily life had goals and rhythm and sunshine—it had hope. Here they had nothing but each other and empty comforts.

"Are you all right?" Thomas asked, and her gaze flicked back to him. He ran his fingers through her frizzy curls and Rose winced. "What did those bastards do to you? I'll kill them. I'll kill them all."

Rose reached up to the crown of her head and found a circle of hair had been shaved down to the scalp. Her fingers danced over fringes of thread where her skin had been stapled and sewn back together again, and she fought the urge to sob. She had so many other things to worry about, but she couldn't stop the superficial flash of self-consciousness when she realized this was how they would all remember her—as a fucking doughnut. WICKED could have at least had the decency to shave her whole head. She would have laughed again if she weren't so heartsick.

Rose cleared her throat to hide her fluster and rubbed his biceps. "It's okay, Thomas. They gave me my memories back."

"All of them?"

She nodded. "I remember this life and the last and even the one before that."

"You remember…" Thomas stepped back from her like she was radioactive. "Then can you tell me what the hell we're doing here?"

Rose grabbed his hand and led him over to a cot in the corner of the room where they sat side-by-side as they had once done in the Glade, but this time, instead of gently feeling their way through their curtained past, she was about to throw a spotlight on the whole thing.

"We were only little when the Sun Flares torched the Earth. Those who didn't die when they came died later trying to squeeze billions of survivors into what was left. But there were too many people in places too small to support them all. So, some geniuses invented a way to maximize the remaining resources, and, surprise, fucked it up royal.

"They released the Flare, a virus that was supposed to humanely kill select colonies, but it tore through humanity, driving people mad and ripping apart their bodies from the inside. Whole cities, whole families, they were decimated within days. Scientists tried to cure it, but it mutated and nothing they did worked. They dumped what was left of their useless money into WICKED, the World In Catastrophe: Killzone Experimentation Department."

Thomas held up both hands. "Whoa! Killzone? Experiment? Rose, this is insane—"

"I know this is going to be damn near impossible for you, Thomas, but just let me finish and then you can ask me whatever you want. Over time, they found that some people, especially kids, were Immune to the Flare. Us, Thomas, most of us. We're Immune, which is why WICKED captured us or coaxed us here by any means necessary. We're a resource and a limited one at that. They wanted to know why we're Immune and they're not."

Thomas stared not at Rose but through her. "And the Maze?"

"It was part of a series of experiments designed to map our brains, see what makes us different, what makes us Immune."

Rose could see Thomas' heart hammering through his chest.

"By killing us?" he snarled.

"Nobody wanted that," Teresa replied, stepping in hesitantly from the periphery.

"You," Thomas said slowly as he blinked at Teresa like someone had just turned on the light in the darkness. "I've seen you before. In my dreams."

Teresa's brows raised as her lips parted, and Rose caught the hint of astonishment—or maybe relief—at the corner of her friend's mouth. "Yeah, we know each other."

"How?"

Rose's eyes darted between the pair. She was already a third-wheel, and she had so many more apologies to dole out. She took a few steps back as she said, "You two should talk. I need to see the others."

Thomas grabbed Rose before she could slip away and pressed her close so he could whisper in her ear. "Can I trust her?"

"I don't know, Thomas, I don't even trust myself, but Teresa was your best friend before the Maze. Just remember, we all worked for WICKED, but she still does."

Rose felt Thomas' lips move against her skin as he mouthed Teresa's name like he was tasting it, but then he hugged Rose tighter. "What about you now that you have your memories back?"

Rose kissed Thomas' cheek and slipped a piece of paper into his pocket. "I have one last thing to do before I quit and so do you. I made the Chancellor promise to take you all to the Safe Haven where they won't bother you again. If they take you anywhere other than these exact coordinates or they try and make you leave without the others, you kill them. All of them. Don't think about it, just do it. Don't trust anybody here, even Teresa."

"I thought she was your friend—and mine?" he questioned.

"She is, but if the Cure doesn't synthesize, I don't know what she'll do—what they'll _make_ her do."

"What about you? I'm not leaving without you."

Rose smiled. "Trust me one last time, okay?"

"No more stunts, Rose," he warned. "Not without backup."

"Since when does The Great Thomas worry?"

"Since I met my match in crazy stupid."

Rose kissed Thomas again before making her rounds of reunions with the rest of the boys she'd come to love like family. They were tired, confused, and despite being together, utterly alone. Chuck, as usual, was there to buoy spirits and Gally there to aggravate them again, but Jeff was simply unmoored. He leaned in a corner, barely aware of his surroundings. His eyes sported deep, puffy bags complemented by two days' patchy scruff around his drooping mouth; she barely recognized him. Rose gravitated to his loneliness like a magnet.

"Hey," she said quietly.

"Hey."

As soon as Jeff's eyes met hers, Rose clutched him to her so fast he didn't have time to react. She pressed her cheek into his shoulder, locked her hands around his back, and just held him. She held him until she felt his scraggly cheek graze her naked scalp. She held him until his fingers grabbed fistfuls of her robe. She held him until she felt the heat of his tears emblazon her forehead.

"I miss him," Jeff managed as his voice cracked.

"Me too."

"I tried to talk him out of it, you know? I didn't want to go in there. He made me. He made me, but now he's gone and I'm here. How is it that the hero dies and the lousy coward don't?"

"Clint didn't fold," Rose managed through a stuffy nose and a hitching breath, "and neither did you, Jeff. Med-jacks don't fold."

"Med-jacks don't fold," he echoed.

Rose tightened her grip around him. "I wouldn't be here without either of you. Thank you for coming for me. I'll never forget it."

They held each other like that, fiercely anchoring each other, until someone tapped on Rose's shoulder and jerked her out of their connection. But she ignored the tap and instead focused on the wet face of her colleague—her friend—and tried to smile. "They're going back for him, Jeff. They're going to find Clint so he's not alone."

Jeff sniffed and wiped his eyes as quickly as he could, casting nervous glances around the room. The others were watching but not with judgment, not this time.

Teresa was waiting with an apologetic look on her face. "We gotta go, Roz."

Rose hugged Jeff one more time before she had to let him go. As Teresa led her friend toward the door, Rose ventured one more glance back to find Jackson and Renato with their hands clamped on Jeff's shoulders. They had all lost friends that day, but they had each other. It didn't lessen Rose's guilt, but like one of Clint's salves, in time they might help heal each other's wounds.

They navigated several more identical corridors before Teresa ventured a quiet word. "Do you think you did the right thing?"

For some reason, Rose's heart rate accelerated. The right thing… None of this felt right. But Ava had said she believed they could engineer the Cure out of it. Did that make it worth it? Did that justify every sacrifice?

"If I say yes, I'm as bad as Ava and her cronies. If I say no, then everyone died for nothing. The only question that matters is if my friends can ever forgive me."

Teresa nodded numbly. "Do you think Tom will forgive me? "

"I don't know, Reese, you've known him a lot longer than I have. But you came through for me in the end. That's got to count for something, right?"

Teresa remained silent until they pulled up to a curtained window and a door just as plain and innocuous as the rest. And yet behind it...

"Newt and Alby are in there. But, Roz, I have to warn you, it's not great. They both suffered—"

But Rose had ceased listening.

 _They both suffered._

 _It's not great._

 _They suffered._

Had WICKED cut off the air in here? Rose couldn't breathe. Her chest tightened and her lungs wheezed. She grabbed for her throat but found she couldn't feel it—no, she couldn't feel her fingers. She yanked them back to make sure they were still there. No blood, no knife, not this time, only ten trembling digits bleached perfect white in the fluorescence.

 _They suffered._

Rose swayed and stumbled, her hands bracing against the glass and squeaking as her sweaty palms streaked down. Coldness seeped into her bones.

"Are you okay?" Teresa said as she wrapped an arm around Rose's shoulder.

It sounded like Teresa was talking through a muffled speaker in another wing. Rose gasped for air in quick huffs and slipped further down the glass.

"Roz! Speak to me! Come inside and sit down."

But Rose couldn't move.

 _They suffered._

"I. Can't," she wheezed.

"Roz, it's all right, it's all right."

Rose's heart smashed against her rib cage like Minho's fists against the Maze Doors, and her words raced out lightning fast. "It's not all right. It can't be all right. It's my fault. It's all my fault. They'll never forgive me. They suffered."

Teresa clamped her hands on Rose's shoulders and squared her gaze on her. "Rosalind, look at me. It's me, Reese. Breathe, just breathe."

But it was so hard. Someone was sucking the air right from her lungs.

"Breathe with me, in and out. Go slow. Keep looking at me, keep listening to my voice. Breathe with me."

They breathed together, and as they did, Teresa and her electric blue eyes came back into focus. The world swelled out from pinpoints back to the dull gray hallway and the plain white door. Rose pinched the hem of Teresa's lab coat and tried to concentrate on the feeling of the soft cotton as she grounded herself.

 _You can do this, Rose. You owe it to them._

"You back with me, Roz?"

Rose nodded before she collapsed against the wall. Despite everything she'd just gone through, she had never felt more bone-weary, as though her muscles had atrophied and her spine had turned to powder. She was empty.

"There's a chair just inside," Teresa urged as she tugged Rose through the door and eased her into a chair identical to the one in her own hospital room.

This room was filled with the same beeps and hisses Rose had heard when she woke up, only the two figures inside didn't wake. Newt and Alby lay in parallel beds, wrapped in unflinching white robes with their unflinching white sheets tucked under their arms with military precision. Under the sterile lights, they looked more like mannequins than people, more like boys than men. Fluids dripped in and drained out of them. Someone had combed Newt's hair and shaved Alby's face. Odd how someone had been so ready to dispense with their lives but wanted them to leave beautiful corpses.

"Reese, could you leave me with them for a few minutes?"

Teresa hovered hesitantly in the door frame. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"No fucking way, but all the same…"

After a long breath, her friend closed the door, but Rose spied her slender silhouette pacing beyond the curtains.

The trio was alone now with just the tubes and the wires for company. Rose skootched her chair between their beds and reached for each of their hands. They were warmer than their cold surroundings implied, and relief flooded Rose's body.

For a moment, she felt that same awkward nakedness that she had felt at Cat's graveside, but she owed these two so much more than a song; she owed them her complete honesty—but Rose could never help herself, not when it came to her boys.

"Hey, guys," she began softly. "You're looking really good for a couple of reckless shanks. Just think, when you wake up, you're going to get so many girls with those sweet scars." She squeezed their limp hands. "And you're going to wake up soon for me, aren't you? Because otherwise, between Gally's bragging and Chuck's sweetness, there won't be any ladies left for you."

Still no response from either man.

"This should be easier for me, shouldn't it?" Rose continued more somberly. "But I guess telling somebody how you feel is never easy, especially when they mean so much to you. You two are the best leaders I've ever known, and you should know I remember everything again. I know I wasn't always the easiest person to manage and I fought you at pretty much every turn, but you never gave up on me, even when I probably deserved it. You defended me and protected me and looked after me, but not just me—everybody. I wish I could be worthy of your love.

"I'm sorry you got caught up in my games, but I promise you that I will give up everything to make it right. So get better, cuz when you wake up, the new world is going to need you to lead it."

Rose released Newt's hand so she could shift her focus to the dark-skinned man sleeping peacefully as she rubbed the back of his hand. "Hey, boss. I never got a chance to tell you this, but you looked really hot wielding that bow and arrow. Gally was pissed when I told him you were the best fighter, so just remember to rub that in next time you see him, okay?"

For a moment, Rose fancied she saw a smile at the corner of his mouth, but it was just Teresa's shadow passing over them as she paced the hallway.

"And I just wanted to say, you were right to be suspicious of me. All those times you looked at me, I could tell you didn't trust me, and I should have listened to that. If I had exercised one ounce of the caution you always did, maybe you'd all be safe and together. You're a hell of a leader and friend, Alby."

Rose placed a lingering kiss on his hand before shifting all of her attention to the handsome blonde behind her. Over her shoulder, she whispered, "Do me one more favor, boss, and pretend you're not listening to what I'm about to say? And if you can't stop being a nosy shank for ten minutes, at least do us the favor of never bringing it up again."

With one bandaged hand, Rose traced Newt's cheek. She wished she had her fiddle. Just looking at Newt's defiant jaw and crown of blonde hair coaxed hundreds of songs to her fingertips, but, in the end, there was only one she wanted to play.

"My Bloody Newt," she whispered, running her hand across his cheek.

 _If things had been different…_

For a moment, Rose was back on that picnic blanket in the shade of the Orchard sitting side-by-side with a boy struggling to tell her something he knew she wasn't ready to hear. He loved her.

Newt loved her. Thomas loved her. Minho loved her. Rose couldn't fathom what she'd done to earn their love and she was sure she didn't deserve it, but she was lucky to have it. She'd lived three lives but had never met better men. And she loved them, too, loved them with a ferocity she hadn't been capable of feeling since she was seven years old, but she held them in different chambers of her heart, and looking at Newt, Rose was reminded of what she couldn't give him.

 _If I had still been a Runner…_

Rose placed her hand hesitantly on his left leg, on the thing that could have changed their history or maybe their future together. With her Swipe removed now came the bitterest of truths. Rose remembered that day, relived it with the same aching torture she had when she first witnessed it. She'd been watching, they'd all been watching from Main Control Room.

Before the Maze, Rosalind hadn't known Newt—she wasn't that lucky—but after a year of research and analysis of all the Group A Subjects, he had become like a favorite protagonist in a book or movie, someone she'd been rooting for to overcome insurmountable odds. Without knowing she was even watching, he had made her laugh and at times had made her yearn for his company.

But that day he had jumped from a wall in the Maze, the same ones young Rosalind had been fantasizing about incorporating into her rough draft of her Protocol, and everything had changed.

He fell in the blink of an eye, he fell in slow motion. He drifted down with the grace of a feather and smashed like a brick. The moment his body splayed on the concrete, his blonde hair fanning out like a halo, he was no longer a character on WICKED's silver screen—he was a boy with a mind as shattered as his leg. He was real. WICKED had done that to him; Rosalind had done that to him. She had screamed for Dr. Thorne to send in a retrieval team, but she was kindly reminded "Subject A5 is just another egg in the omelet."

He could be broken. He had been broken.

That night, after sobbing face down into her pillow and envisioning a dozen scenarios where she had escaped into the Maze and rescued the boy with the tattered spirit, Rosalind had finally put the first Phase of her Protocol to paper. What happened to that boy, she would never let happen to another. Within a week's time, the other three Phases were completed and her first draft was on the Chancellor's desk.

If Newt hadn't jumped, would Rosalind have finished her Protocol? Would she ever have found herself in the Maze? Would the Gladers still be in there?

 _If things had been different..._

 _Rose, I'm in love with you._

"I love you, Newt," she said as she found her voice again at last. "And I regret so many things, but one of my greatest regrets is not being able to love you the way you deserve to be loved. There's only one way I can think to make it up to you, and that's to make sure that you live to find that thing that makes you whole. Just know that even though my heart's a mess, you'll always be in it, in that one spot just for you, my bloody Newt. Forever and always."

Rose leaned forward, impulsive and foolhardy to the last, and kissed him on the lips. They were warm and a little rough where the skin had cracked, but they were as reassuring as the man to whom they belonged. Even if Newt never heard her confession, even if he never felt her love emptying across his skin, she would remember.

"Forever and always," she mouthed against his lips.

The door opened and Teresa stumbled back at the sight of Rose draped across the blonde. "Oh, sorry, Roz."

"It's okay."

"Are you ready?"

Rose exhaled slowly, releasing every last ounce of breath from her body. "For my last goodbye?"

She would never be ready.


	30. Chapter 30

**Chapter Thirty**

 _Maroon 5 – Whiskey_

 _A/N: This is Rose and Minho's song. Period. And, oh yeah, this is the last chapter, but... :(_

There was Minho.

Rose expected joy, relief, even hint of familiar passion, but all she felt was crippling guilt—guilt at the sight of him in such pain and guilt at the knowledge that she could no longer run from their truth. Removing the Swipe had returned three lifetimes full of memories, but, looking at him hopeful and handsome as she entered the room, this one stung the most.

Like Newt and Alby, Minho was dressed in a white robe with a sliver of chest peeking through it. From the top of his abs downward, he was wrapped in a cummerbund of gauze as a spiderweb of tubes and wires tethered him to the walls. Rose had seen him run clean-through with a metal spike, and even then the man was too stubborn to die.

"Hello, beautiful."

Rose mustered the fullest smile she could. "Hey there, hero. How ya feeling?"

"Funny enough, my lips hurt. Want to check that out, Doc?"

Rose sat down on his bedside and leaned forward. She opted for a light kiss at the corner of his mouth, but Minho would never allow such reservation, and he grabbed her face and shifted her lips onto his. It was impossible not to melt into his kiss. Didn't matter where or when they were, they were always Rose and Minho.

When he finally released her, Rose pulled back and realized fresh tears had cooled her heated cheeks. She sniffled and blinked, shedding the rest of her relief cascading down her face. He was alive. Her panther was alive and growling.

Without a word, he wiped her jaw line and dropped his hand to hers, clutching it tightly.

"How's my hair look?" Minho asked.

"Better than mine," Rose said as she tried to tousle some locks over the embarrassing desert in her forest of curls.

He shrugged, as though he hadn't even noticed. "Always did."

Despite everything, Rose burst out laughing. "Oh my god, there's no way I could ever love somebody with your ego. Arrogant bastard."

A smirk creased Minho's cheek. "Stubborn liar."

He tugged her hand, urging her closer, and Rose squeezed into the narrow strip of available mattress beside him. She curled into him, one hand worming under his neck and the other resting on his chest. His fingers stroked her arm methodically, and she breathed deeply. He'd been scrubbed and sterilized, but he still smelled like her Minho.

His voice dropped to a near whisper as though he suspected—probably rightly—they were being spied on. "How are the others? None of these creepy slintheads will tell me anything. Who's left?"

His words were blunt, but his tone was tender. Rose cast her eyes down to their joined hands. "We lost Anil, Omar, Winston, Jonas, and Ender. And we lost Clint. We lost him, actually lost him. They haven't even found him."

Her last words came juddering out as Rose choked on the bitter pill and buried her head into Minho's shoulder. He held her tightly, but she could feel his fist digging into her back.

Minho waited for her to calm before he asked carefully, "Newt? Alby?"

"They're hanging on by a thread."

"It's just like those two shuck-heads to want to piss me off like this. They always gotta be the first ones in and the last ones to leave. Slintheads. Absolute slintheads…"

Rose ventured a glance up and found a single diamond glittering in one eye before Minho blinked it away. "You know why I call Alby the Admiral? He thinks I'm just ridin' him cuz that's what I do, but really it's because he'll go down with the ship so long as his men are safe. Not that that slinthead needs another reason to brag about his leadership skills. What a stupid shank."

Despite the gaping wound in his abdomen, Minho squeezed Rose tighter against him.

"What about Thomas?" he asked.

"He's with the others. They brought everybody out of the Maze."

Though he was lying down, Minho looked dizzy. "They're all out?"

Rose nodded. "And they're all okay."

They were quiet for a moment until Minho's hand ceased stroking her back, and she knew her moment of reckoning had come. "You're holding something back," he said. "I knew last and I know this time. You can't protect me from whatever's going on. You owe me, Rose."

"I don't want to," she blurted. "We don't have a lot of time left, and I don't want you to spend what's left of it hating me."

"Not a lot of time? You're freaking me out now, woman. Whatever it is, we'll face it together. It's the only way we got out of the Maze, and it's the only way we get out of here. I know you never listen to me, but do you at least hear that?"

The hospital door swung open, and Teresa popped in her head. She spied the two of them huddled together on his bed as something akin to sadness flickered across her brilliant blue eyes. "Did you tell him yet?"

"Give us a few more minutes," Rose pleaded.

Her friend nodded once and shut the door. Rose had no doubt Teresa would know the moment Minho knew.

"Who's that?" he asked.

"They gave me my memories back," Rose began carefully, tapping her head to remind him of the knitted slash in her skull.

There was a long pause before he asked, "So you remember your past life? Were you right, did you work for them?"

"Yes."

Another pause. "And that chick? She works for WICKED, too?"

Rose nodded.

"Do you still work for them?"

Rose withdrew her hand from his chest as though Minho were fire itself. "I don't know how to answer that."

"A 'no' would be great," he volunteered.

"It's complicated."

He sucked his teeth and shifted beneath her. "Did you work for them the whole time you were in the Glade?"

Her heart beat in time with the steadily accelerating music of Minho's monitor.

"Damnit, Rose, answer me!" he shouted as his fingers dug into her back, and she flinched.

"No. Yes? I don't know. There's so much more I need to tell you, so much I have to explain."

"People died for you, Rose—my friends. _I_ would have. Tell me it wasn't all some game."

"It wasn't," she insisted as she met his fiery eyes in earnest. "Never, not to me."

"Then explain it to me, because I'm shucking spiraling out right now."

"An experiment," she blurted and immediately covered her mouth.

"An experiment." The words rolled around his mouth like a marble. "We were an experiment? I was an experiment to you?"

"No. I was trying to protect you. There's this virus and it's turned the world into monsters, and WICKED—"

"Go slow," he ordered. "Make me understand."

Rose did her best to explain the Flare, what it had done to her own family as well as the rest of the world, and she tried to explain WICKED and its involvement with it. She left out the tortures he'd endured at their hands because Minho would have to cling to an ounce of trust in this place if he and the Gladers were going to make it out alive, but it killed her to keep anything from him, not with all they'd been through together.

She explained how the Flare destroyed the Killzone in anyone who wasn't Immune and how WICKED thought that if they could push an Immune's boundaries enough, they could mine the Cure from their heads.

"But it wasn't enough," Rose continued. "After spending months watching innocent kids die, I knew WICKED's way wasn't going to work. If the Cure to the Flare was in our brains, there had to be something we were missing. Fear and desire, hope and need, love and sacrifice. They're all interconnected, you see? Subjects needed to experience them at max capacity—needed to know what they had to understand what it meant to have it taken away."

On the surface, it was flowery poetry, the kind of stuff people used to write about before their world had been reduced to nothing but survival or death, but the truth was much more scientific than that: Immunes simply made more potent chemicals when exposed to those stimuli.

To his credit, for the first time she could remember, Minho listened to everything without saying a word, but as the truth came tumbling out, Rose felt his hand loosen until it fell away from her entirely. She knew it was coming, but she didn't expect to feel the exact moment he would let her go.

"I don't understand," he said when Rose had finished. "You made me fall in love with you?"

The heat between them had become an inferno, and she paced the room, trying to find oxygen again.

"It was more like I fell in love with you. Because of the time we spent together in the Maze, I knew you already had feelings for me before I came up in the Box—and I had already felt something strong for you—but all that was erased the moment they activated my Swipe. I loved you anyway, Minho. I was meant to."

"I had feelings because you put them there!" he snarled. "Don't act like this was some romance novel, Rose. You loved me because you had to."

"That's not—"

"What about Thomas?" he snapped.

Rose's mouth was sticky and dry. She hadn't realized she was out of breath until she was standing there clutching her heart and panting.

 _You loved me because you had to._

 _Don't freak out, Rose,_ she reminded herself. _As much as you want to, don't freak out._

"He was never part of the Protocol. We were something to each other before the Maze, and I think we just sensed that connection because it was familiar."

Minho's face was grim, his eyes fixed on the bar of fluorescence above him. Rose remembered this same face that night in the rain, that alien expression supplanting his ever-confident features—the look of defeat. His voice was eerily calm as he said, "You fell in love with him even though you weren't supposed to because he's the one you're meant to be with."

"I was never in love with Thomas."

Minho's breaths were slow and shallow. "And what about Newt? Everyone knows how he feels about you."

"I love Newt, but I'm not in love with him either."

The Keeper released one bitter laugh. "Say I let myself believe all that klunk, what makes me so special, huh?"

She looked at him—strong, defiant, ferocious Minho. He was beautiful even in his heartbreak.

"Seriously? You're Minho," Rose answered with a gentle smile. One black brow raised suspiciously as the corner of his mouth twitched, and she added, "Not that you need a bigger head."

But whatever smile might have lurked beneath his lips vanished with another noisy blip of his heart monitor as his gaze landed on the curtained window with the silhouette patrolling outside. "Is that all you have to tell me?"

Rose sighed. "There's so much more I need to explain to you, but I can't."

"You're playing games with me again, Rose. I'm tired of games. I'm tired of puzzles. Even my shucking bones are tired. I just want this all to be over."

"It is over. There's only one thing left to do." There was a heavy weight to her words that ratcheted Minho's eyes to hers. "Engineer the Cure."

"Just like that, huh? Years of torture and we're free to go?"

"Yes," she said slowly, "you will be."

More heartbeats, more piercing stares. He knew.

"'You will be.' Interesting choice of words there, Doc. You're gonna shove us out the door like dirty laundry you've outgrown, spend time with your little WICKED buddies? You're just gonna stand there like you're doing us some shuck favor, and you don't even have the decency to come with us, face up to the others."

Rose crossed her arms over her chest trying not to freeze where she stood. Minho had always given her warmth, even as far back as Bridget—the only thing she could associate with him was heat—but now his words gave her hypothermia. She rubbed her biceps furiously.

"I'm doing my best to atone."

A pregnant silence filled the air.

"What does that mean." Less a question, more a demand.

Rose whirled back around, her own fire lighting her eyes this time. "It means I've lived three lives and managed to fuck up all of them, but I did manage to learn one thing. It was the last thing my mother taught me before my dad carved her and my baby sister up: When you love someone with your whole heart, you'll do anything to protect them, no matter the cost."

The heart blips quickened. "You can't mean—"

"WICKED will do one final surgery on me. If it's successful, then it's all over—finished. WICKED will dissolve, the world will heal, and life will go on for everyone everywhere."

"Okay, so what happens after the surgery for us?"

Rose shrugged one shoulder. "You leave."

"You mean, 'We leave.'"

Rose was silent.

"No, _we_ leave," Minho emphasized.

"That's not how the Cure works, Minho. This was always my last Directive, the only one in Phase Four."

"You told me we're Immune. We're Immune, Rose, we don't have to do any of this. Forget it. We can all start over somewhere far away and fix this ourselves." His voice was tight and desperate.

"Newt's not Immune, neither is Chuck. What about them, huh? You just want to leave them here to die horrible deaths, maybe kill others? And what if you have children someday and they're not Immune? Could you really watch them die like that—die like a Crank? You're not thinking this through, Minho."

"Well, I haven't really had time since I just shucking found out about this!" He ran his hands through his hair and then slammed them emphatically into the mattress. A growl came out more like a howl as Minho hit the bed again and again and again.

"You're right," Rose said. "It isn't fair. Teenagers shouldn't have to choose between saving themselves and saving the world. It isn't fair, but it's what has to be done."

"I thought the Glade was the worst thing that could happen to me, but I want to go back. Can't we just go back?"

Rose couldn't resist Minho's pull any longer. His eyes, soft and wet, drew her back to his bedside, and she crouched beside it, sweeping his hand in hers. She kissed his knuckles and rubbed them against her cheek. "There's no going back. You don't remember what's happened to the world and you don't remember what the survivors have had to do because of it."

Suddenly, his hand overturned and cupped her chin firmly so that he could guide her attention to his face. "And I don't care, but I know whatever it is, I can't survive it without you."

"You don't understand, I know how to fix it. Because of _you_ , I know how to fix it. I can save the world, but it means I can't be with you."

Minho shook his head furiously as he released her. "Then it's no good. Find another way to save it because your other idea is terrible—literally the worst shucking idea ever invented. And what about the others who sacrificed themselves for you? Are you just going to spit in their faces, just throw away the gift they gave you?"

Rose winced, tears in her eyes once again. "That's not— God, you make it sound so horrible."

"It is horrible, Rose. It is horrible. You say you set up this whole thing to save our lives, and we ended up dying anyway, and now you're going to end up dying. What was the point of any of it?"

"You don't remember the Flare! You don't remember what it does to people, how it rips them apart from the inside out and destroys whole families. You have no idea what it will do to Newt and Chuck—and it will do it. Make no mistake, there is nowhere safe."

"I lost dozens of friends to curing it, so I think I have some say in the matter," he asserted bitterly.

"There are other test subjects, Minho, other tests. Without my Cure, WICKED will work to find another. They won't stop until they do. I can get the others out now."

Somewhere along the line, Rose's heartache had been replaced by Rosalind's resolve. Her path was clear and unwavering, and no matter how strong the temptation to stay forever in Minho's arms, she couldn't—she'd never been lucky, and Fate hadn't seen fit to change that now. The only thing she could do was be grateful for the one beautiful thing life had offered her.

"I don't wanna fight anymore, Minho," Rose said as she climbed back into bed beside him. He didn't push her away; he even let her run her hand over his chest. "I just want to hold you and remember these few moments when you were mine."

"I've always been yours, Doc. I always will be."

Minho was looking at her with that forthright gaze that had always made her heart flutter. Rose traced her nose up from the hollow of his neck under his jaw. She glossed her lips pendulously across his until they parted and hers did, too. They savored their last kiss with none of the perilous fire that had ignited her spark their one night together but with all of the same ardor. This was about love, the kind of love that would change the world.

Rose vaguely registered some soft thudding in the background, but it was hard to make out over the furious bleats of the monitor and the roar of passion in her chest.

Minho deepened the kiss as he netted his fingers in what was left of her curls and molded her tighter against him heedless of the monstrous wound that ached beneath his bandages. Rose relished one last forbidden twirl of his hair around her fingertip as she purred into his mouth.

The thuds were louder now—maybe her own heart thumping in time with Minho's.

"Everything all right in—" someone shouted as the door flew open. An interchangeable doctor stood slack-jawed in the room as she assessed the couple on the bed.

Teresa came jogging in after, her blush of exertion melting into a blush of embarrassment. "I knocked," she blurted. "Sorry. I didn't get an answer, and I thought something was wrong when I heard the machines going crazy."

The doctor scowled at both of them—mostly Rose—and waggled a warning finger before she left the room with a sharp snap of the door, leaving Teresa inside.

Rose read the signal clearly: Time to go before her carriage turned back into a pumpkin.

"I'm sorry," Teresa said gently.

"I know," Rose replied, and Minho's hand fisted in her robe.

He didn't pay the dark-haired girl one ounce of attention—his eyes bored solely into Rose as he pressed his forehead to hers. "How is it I spend two years doing the same klunk over and over again with nothing but time, and the one moment I need to last, there's not a single shucking second to be found?"

Rose smiled before she planted another kiss on his lips. "I don't know. Every second with you feels interminable."

"There it is," he whispered.

"What?"

"The last button. You just pushed it." His arms wrapped around Rose, and he buried his smirk into her neck. "I can't let you go."

Teresa cleared her throat. "If you like, I can see about adding her to your Swipe. It would make things easier for you to bear—you wouldn't even know there was anything to bear."

Instantly, Minho's arms unspooled around Rose as he barked, "Is this shuck-head serious? You people have taken everything from me and that's still not good enough. You're not taking her from me, not up here," he said, tapping his head then tapping his chest, "and not in here."

"Just trying to help," Teresa muttered.

"Well, help yourself to the door."

Rose caressed his cheek to draw his attention back to her. "Minho, I have to go."

She had expected him to fight her, but instead, as his last act of love, he honored her wish for peace. He kissed her forehead, then her eyelids, and last her lips. With a nod, he said, "Okay, go save the world then, shuck-face."

And then he patted her ass.

As Rose stood, she glowered at him, and Minho grinned. "I hate you," she teased.

"Translation: you love me."

She bent down and kissed him one final time. "I do love you, Minho. I love you."

Rose didn't need to say anything more. She wanted the last thing he heard from her to be her absolute truth. She joined Teresa at the door and before she closed it, she channeled the last of her strength into her heart as she ventured one more look back the man who had changed her. He was waiting for her, of course, and gave her one final nod before Teresa pulled the door shut.

* * *

This room was just like all the others, unadorned, indistinguishable, and utilitarian. Aside from a gleaming silver gurney and a handful of whirring machines, the only other things in the room were six disinterested scientists and Ava Paige—Teresa hadn't been allowed in. The Chancellor stood tall in the center without a hint of expression on her face save for some softness at the corners of her eyes.

A nurse guided Rose into the room in a wheelchair and locked the wheels with a snap. One of the lab coats whirled around, and Rose recognized Dr. Thorne's angular face and glinting glasses immediately.

"Welcome back, Rosalind," she said, not even attempting to hide her predatory smile. "You must be awfully proud of your Protocol's success."

"More awful than proud," Rose replied evenly as she relished the sour purse of the Psych's thin lips. "But at least I'm not murdering children for sport anymore."

Dr. Thorne narrowed her eyes and extracted a long pair of wickedly pointed shears from her coat pocket. Without another word, she lopped off the last of Rose's crimson curls. They fell like petals, mostly red and some white, same as the ones Anil had portended from her namesake in the Deadheads. In a moment, the buzz of an electric razor sang across her skull as Dr. Thorne definitively completed Rose's humiliation.

Bald-headed and stone-hearted, Rose climbed up from her chair and onto the icy gurney. Another doctor squared her on the table and then covered her to the chest with a thin sheet. "Ready for the Halo, Chancellor," he said.

Another pair of hands, this one rougher, braced Rose's head as someone else lowered a fat plastic visor over her face with only the top of her head peeking out above it. Above her eyes was a monitor with a simulation of the same night sky that hung over the Glade, replete with flickering Aurora and a bruised hint of Milky Way. Gloopy conductive gels and sticky diodes were affixed to Rose's skull as well as her chest while someone drove a long IV needle into the fold of her arm. It was surreal, laying under the sky where she had felt so much warmth but feeling nothing but coldness now.

"Baseline established, Chancellor," announced an authoritative voice as more tinkling and shuffling filled the dry air.

Rose lost track of time under that narrow swath of green sky as hushed voices echoed off concrete. At last, she heard Ava's voice silence everything. "Rosalind, we're ready to begin the surgery, but in order to do so, I need you to forget our quarrels and focus on what matters most. We only get one shot at this, so we have to make it count. Please understand, we can't put you to sleep until you produce the chemicals we need."

Rose wanted to help—she wanted this to be over and done with so her boys could be safe and move on—but her resentment, her anger, especially her heartache overwhelmed her. She wanted to rip off the visor and overturn this damn gurney. She wanted to shred every lab coat and smash every machine and every face while she was at it. She wanted to firebomb the whole WICKED compound, stand on the top of the Maze walls, and watch it burn with her Gladers beside her.

"Levels stagnating," the disembodied voice amended.

"Rosalind, listen to me," Ava said in a near whisper. Rose couldn't see her, but she could feel her inside her head. The kind voice of her one-time mentor had morphed into a sinister warning that slithered between Rose's ears. "There's no more time to be angry or vengeful. Your time is up, you know that, but I also know you don't want it to be up for the others.

"I've never made you a promise, Rosalind, only ever offered you hopes or incentives, but I'm out of those, and I'm also out of patience. So, this time I will make you this _one_ promise. If you don't give me what I want, if you continue to fight me like the child you are, I promise you I will kill everyone you love and I will do it without mercy or restraint."

Above Rose, the sky evaporated, replaced instead with the apathetic mugshots of each Subject in Group A just as they had appeared in their WICKED files. Their faces stared blankly at her, as though their fates had already been sealed. The faces of subjects. The faces of boys. The faces of friends. The faces of lovers.

Frypan, Gally, Zart, Clint, little Chuck, littler Max, Alby, Newt, Thomas.

"Newt and Alby? It's as easy as flipping a switch. And Chuck, I'll personally ensure a visit to the Crank Pits—you know what will happen to him there. The rest of Group A? I'll throw them back in the Maze, but I'll turn off the supplies and I'll leave the Doors wide open. How long do you think they'll last, assuming any of them survive the first night?

"Dear Thomas, well, we can still use him. He always was the ideal candidate. He'll go through the rest of the Trials alone. He'll survive them—you know he will—but what do you think that will do to him, especially when he knows what happened to all of his friends?"

The screen shifted again.

Minho.

"And your Minho." Ava's voice was etched with irritation. "Now that your Swipe has been removed, I imagine you remember the first time you saw him, so you'll remember how we teach lessons here. Minho will bear the brunt of everything.

"I'll remove his Swipe. How do you think he would enjoy his old memories back, his punishments and his tests? Then I'll make sure he watches his friends die one by one. I'll even give him a chance to save them but snatch it away at the last second. Maybe a few will even die in his arms.

"Only when there's nothing and no one left for me to rip from him will I show him this video of us sawing open your skull and extracting your brain. And when he has no fight left, when I've stolen the last thing I can from him—his will to live—I'll finally take his life. And this will all start all over again with Group B. You don't know them, but that doesn't matter to a tender heart like yours, does it, Rosalind?"

The younger Minho stared down at Rose. His eyes were black holes, pulling her into the emptiness WICKED had created in him through their years of systematic torture before the Maze. The Swipe and the Trials had given him new purpose and control over his life, and the thought of that newly ignited fire being extinguished was too much to bear.

"How could I have ever cared about you?" Rose seethed through gritted teeth. "You are the Devil."

"Rosalind, my darling, I lost my soul the day the Flare took hold of this world. I've got nothing and no one left to lose, and you best remember that. So, it's a simple choice, dear: you or them."

Minho's face evaporated, this time replaced by crystal clear video shot in the emerald green of night vision. Rose saw her hut shuddering beneath blankets of rain. She saw herself gazing face-up as water flattened her buoyant curls. She saw Minho striding through the darkness as his commanding steps devoured the space between them.

She noticed everything she'd been too stupid or unwilling to see before. How they leaned into each other at every word. How they licked their lips every time they looked at each other. How they panted after every argument like they were making love not war. Rose could finally see the shape of their inevitability—an impetuous girl and a cocky boy.

It was surreal seeing her life's turning point played out in front of her, even more surreal when she realized it had all happened a few short days and yet somehow a lifetime ago—but it was beautiful, too. While watching that rainy day dance was no match for experiencing it, it afforded Rose perfect clarity. All of her doubts about whether it had all been a game or a manipulation imploded as their kiss exploded.

It was real, all of it.

"Optimum output detected, Chancellor," the other voice said with excitement.

A hand closed around Rose's wrist and squeezed. "Good choice, my dear. Thank you for your service to WICKED. We will not forget it— _I_ will not forget it."

There was surprising affection in Ava's voice, as though every vile threat she had just uttered had all been a charade, not her allusion to love for the sacrificial lamb on the table. Her voice dropped to a whisper just outside the visor, so close it felt like the Chancellor had wedged in beside Rose.

"Despite everything, I want you to know, you were my proudest accomplishment, and I will miss you, dearest Bridget."

 _Bridget…_

Her eyes drifted closed, heavy from more than the drugs pooling in her veins. Dimly, in the back of her mind, she noted the whine of a bone saw, but it didn't seem so very important, not when there was something much more beautiful in front of her. For the first time in a long time, when Rose fell asleep, she didn't see galaxies or aurorae, gray walls, diamonds or pearls. She saw her Gladers, waving and welcoming her home.

 _A/N: …but there is an epilogue. Please don't stone me._


	31. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

 _Sophiya – For the Record_

 _A/N: I guess the good news is because I posted the last chapter so late, you get the final chapter almost immediately! Anyway, super-long epilogue because it's HARD to say goodbye._

 _For the record, this chapter wouldn't exist without this song. Please show it some love—it's one of the prettiest, most evocative things I've heard, and all I could think of was Rose and Minho._

 _Also, this final chapter is dedicated to that one friend everyone should have, a supportive queen who, even though she doesn't follow your fandom (and doesn't know what a dirty perv you are—until now), takes the time to learn about it and read your fanfic to encourage you and inspire you along the way. This is for my queen—this is for you, Mary. Saranghaeyeo. *cue Golden Girls theme*_

* * *

As she crested the ridge, she hoisted her backpack higher up her shoulders and double-checked her GPS. She was exactly where she was supposed to be.

The air was thin here but also familiar, that same lung-constricting wildness she remembered from her childhood. She eyeballed the valley from above. This was certainly no Glade. Instead of walls, it was surrounded by enormous mountains, and while there was green peppered throughout, it was far less than the overwhelming shades of emerald she once knew.

She recalled this place from book she had once found in an abandoned library, only instead of the toques of snow they had once sported, the mountains wore white berets and instead of an intimidating sea of cerulean, it had shriveled to paltry lake in the basin of its former glory. The forests of lush pine from generations ago had withered into scrubby bushes or been replaced with copses of apple trees. The majesty of the old world had reluctantly bowed to the utilitarian new.

Surrounding the lake were dozens of thatched roofs, some small and some rambling. There were dusty rectangles of small gardens and a huge sandy diamond she couldn't puzzle out. People moved down below, small as ants, maybe a hundred or more but all with a sense of industry—that wasn't much different from the Glade.

She twisted the lens on her binoculars to get a clearer look. Men and women worked side-by-side, some of whom she recognized from her cursory study of Group B though she had never had time to learn any names. Some were middle-aged on down to children and even one baby.

A baby. Whose?

She didn't recognize the woman holding it, a caramel-skinned brunette who she assumed to be the mother, but the girl didn't look to be much older than any of the other Gladers. Who was the father?

Eleven months was a long time to be gone, long enough for a lot of things.

She heard a rustle behind her and immediately crouched into attack mode. Instantly, her gun jumped into her hand, though her speed betrayed her confidence as the steel trembled in her grip.

"If you value your life, you'll drop the weapon and keep on movin' like you ain't never seen this place," said an ominous voice somewhere behind her.

Slowly, she turned, gun pointed up but her finger still on the trigger guard. Her keen eyes darted to every cranny, but she could not find her opponent.

"I ain't playin'," he continued. "I'll put an arrow right through you. I ain't never missed with this thing, and I got no plans to start now."

At last, she straightened and slipped the gun into her waistband with a smile.

"And take off that dumb shuck hat while you at it."

"Oh, slim it, would ya, Alby?" she replied as she peeled off her baseball cap, her now chin-length locks cascading across her face.

Rose heard a crack, then another, and then finally a huge crash coupled with a crescendo of crinkling leaves. She clambered up the hillside where she found the coffee-skinned man in a tangle of bent limbs and leafy confetti, his bow still dangling from the branch above him. He'd shaven his head, which gave him an adult sleekness that complemented his usual confidence.

"Are you all right?" Rose asked as she assessed him while trying to suppress her grin.

"You a ghost or a flashback?" Alby groaned.

"Pretty sure I'm a girl."

Alby tentatively caressed Rose's cheek as though he feared his hand would go right through it, his thumb stroking the crest of her cheekbone. It made a few languid arcs before he gave her a solid slap. "You stupid slinthead. Always gotta pull some stupid shuckin' stunt and make me look like a bigger slinthead by association."

"Ow!" Rose whined as she took a seat beside him. "I know you're pissed, but I didn't think you'd hit me."

"Pissed don't begin to cover it—you deserve an arrow in your backside. But since you lived through an all-out Griever onslaught," he reminded, showing her her own mangled palms still streaked with a zigzag of scars, "you can handle a good smack, maybe another."

Rose winced just in case Alby was serious, but he just laid there in his bed of leaves, staring up at his bow.

"You're right," she admitted softly. "Maybe this is a bad idea. I don't know what I was thinking coming up here."

"Same thing you always thinkin': nothing sensible."

Rose sighed. She hadn't honestly expected to ever enter their village. She planned to wait until nightfall, drop off her case, and leave—no harm, no foul—but then her boys always seemed to catch her by surprise.

"I wasn't trying to disrupt what you got going on," she mumbled.

"Ah, but you always do, don't ya, shankette?"

"I should leave this with you and you can just give it to everybody, okay? It's really important that you guys use it," she said as she started to remove her backpack, but Alby shoved her hand away from her shoulder.

"Feathers don't look good on you, Rose."

She quirked an eyebrow and considered the strange look on his face—it was almost… playful? "Are you calling me a chicken?"

"Chuck, cluck," he said evenly with a pointed look.

"But they'll hate me after all I've done. I got so many of our friends killed, and they'll never forgive—"

"That's their right, ain't it? You should at least have the decency to let them figure that out for themselves. If you ain't learned nothing else in that Glade, ignorance ain't never been bliss."

As Rose mulled over his words, Alby sat up beside her. His dark eyes assessed the shadows flitting across his new kingdom as he added more gently, "You don't think I don't see every one of my boys' faces when I close my eyes at night? I didn't have to bring them in the Maze with me that day, but I did. Some of 'em I never even had the chance to fight for before they died. The others here, they don't hold it against me."

"Because they hold it against me."

Alby rolled his eyes and they landed on Rose.

"Even Gally won't hold it against you, and Gally will hold a thunderstorm against Thomas." Rose laughed, but he shook his head. "Nah, I'm serious. He actually did that. Twice."

More somber again, he continued, "Point is, it ain't never gonna go away, but that don't make it all your fault—some of it maybe, but not all. You didn't open those Doors and you sure as shuck didn't send those Grievers—that's on WICKED. You start taking credit for their klunk and that's good as forgiving 'em. I ain't about to do that."

With considerable effort, Alby stood up and offered his hand to her. "So, if you done makin' excuses, would ya mind showin' me that reckless bravery I know ya still got, and man up?"

"'Man up,' huh?" Rose said with narrowed eyes.

"Perfect. C'mon."

"Fine, but can I at least put the hat back on?"

"For once, you thinkin' smart. I don't need every last shank on my case soon as we get down there."

Alby snatched his bow from the tree and headed down the steep cliff face using the trees as a bannister while Rose wrangled her unruly locks under the canvas cap. The terrain was treacherous, but there was no mistaking his heavy limp to the right. Thanks to his battle wounds, Alby was now the perfect complement to his Second-in-Command.

As they reached the bottom of the cliff, Rose's heart seized. It was like the Glade had grown up. It wasn't just the familiar faces that passed ahead of her that had filled in and blossomed out, but by Glade standards, the village was huge. Some of the buildings were even larger than the Homestead with wide swaths of pretty yards between them. The Walls had grown into mountains, and yet things felt freer than Rose could ever remember. The air smelled clean and arid, with just a hint of Frypan's unmistakable barbeque pork lacing each breeze.

"Newt should be back soon," Alby said as he ran his hand over his smooth head. "He's out with the other Foragers right now."

"Foragers? New role?"

He nodded. "We kept most of the old ones and had to add a few new. Rules are a little different here, too. One and two stayed the same, but three's changed: no one leaves alone. You want to go explorin', you gotta take someone with you. Might not be Grievers, but we got wolves and thieves, and they've cost us before."

"Aren't you already breaking your own rule being up there by yourself?"

"Nah, Marie's covering my back." Alby waved over his shoulder and shortly thereafter, Rose heard the trample of boots through the underbrush. A few moments later, a girl with cinnamon skin and eyes appeared beside them. Rose was reminded instantly of Anil.

"Everything all right, Alby?"

Spice in her voice, just like Anil. Rose's heart constricted painfully.

"Head back to the Kitchen, would ya? Get some water and jerky?"

"Aye, aye, Admiral," the girl said with a wary look at Rose.

Rose's lips upturned. "Admiral, huh?"

Alby scowled and ran his hand over his head again. "Shuckin' Minho. Caught on like wildfire here."

At the mention of the Runner's name, Rose fell silent while she followed her friend toward the nearest hut. Alby stuck to the perimeter of town, but it quickly became apparent that she was as impossible to ignore as ever.

"Yo, Alby!"

Rose tipped her head so shadows fell long over her face. From under the shelter of her brim, she caught sight of a looming silhouette made bulkier by the midday sun; the word "burly" came to mind. One large black eye descended beneath the horizon of her cap until she was level with its perfect roundness.

"Who's the new Greenie—holy shucking klunk!"

Frypan wrapped his bear arms around Rose like she was a tree trunk as he uprooted her, spinning her wildly in a circle. Rose couldn't even move her arms beneath his vice-like grip.

"Fry," she laughed, "I'm trying to be incognito!"

He put her back down and rubbed the top of her head. "Next time try not to look so cute and you'll do a better job."

Rose glanced down at her modest brown t-shirt, camo cargo pants with her gun still tucked in the waist, and dusty combat boots. Oh yes, she was the recipe for sugar and spice and everything nice.

"Cute?" she said dubiously as she straightened her hat. "You were never one to embellish, Fry. Don't start now."

Her secretly sweet Cook evidently wasn't worried about keeping his sweetness a secret any longer. This new world had transformed more than just the village they lived in but the people who lived in it, and the wilderness certainly suited Frypan. His wooliness had grown ten-fold in the milder climate, his beard now bristling down to his chest. Some whimsical shank had even seen fit to give him a flannel shirt.

"You look like a lumberjack," Rose joked as she fluffed his beard.

Fry raised one thick brow. "Is it a good look?"

She smiled. "You pull it off."

Sure enough, Frypan's display attracted the attention of a few other passersby as two boys jogged over.

"No fucking way!"

"Language!" Rose scolded as she raced forward for one of the best hugs of her life—as good as the first one she remembered in the Glade.

"Chuck! You've grown so much! Look at you," she cooed as she clutched him to her. "You're such a man now."

Rose barely recognized him. Chuck had thinned out as he'd sprouted up, though his cheeks still sported those plump apples she had always adored. His hair was longer than Rose's, and it was pulled back in a loose ponytail. With a too-large t-shirt tucked haphazardly into his too-big pants, he looked like a cabin boy on a pirate ship.

Max wasn't much different, still white as the alabaster mountaintops and just as round-faced as ever, but his eyes were brighter and his clothes were much better-fitting. He stuck close to Chuck, as though he was afraid if he let his friend out of his sight, he'd lose him.

"Can Max and I take Rose around?" the kid begged Alby, but their leader scowled.

"You two lousy shanks can't keep a secret to save your lives."

"Come on, Alby, it's _Rose_! You should be shouting it from the mountain."

"Now, that's up to her, ain't it?"

Chuck looked hopefully to Rose, but she gave him a sheepish shrug. "It might be easier for everybody if we didn't make a big deal out of it. Some people might not be exactly happy to see me."

"Psh," the young man retorted, "who? Minho? I figured you guys became friends since he came to help you in the Maze."

Rose waved a hand, hoping the kid would just leave it alone for once. "It's fine, Chuck. I'd love to walk with you two. Just keep it low-key, okay?"

He wrinkled his nose but agreed, and the three ventured down one of the dirt roads through town. Rose attracted quite a few curious looks, but she kept her hat low, and since she had such unassuming escorts, no one paid them much notice, especially Gally, who breezed right by them. Lord, she was going to enjoy throwing that in his face later (assuming she wasn't thrown out of town face-first herself).

"Welcome to Shuckit," Chuck proclaimed as he gestured around town.

"To where?"

"Shuckit. You like it? It was Minho's idea. Well, not really. Newt asked him what we should call this place, and he said, 'Name it whatever you want. Shuck it.' Actually, I think Minho kinda hates the name. Everyone else thinks it's funny."

Chuck took Rose's hand and carted her from building to building. It was strange, feeling like a Greenie all over again despite having all her memories back.

"It's much better than the Glade. I mean, besides the fact that there are no walls, we got a little of everything here. There's a store and a school and a cafeteria and, oh, a hospital and there's even a barber shop, but the girls refuse to call it that. We even got this sweet ballfield. No real showers or toilets, but Gally says he's working on them, and a couple of the Builders rigged up some weird thing over there that kind of works like one. Still, it's pretty sweet to wash in the lake whenever you want.

"Ooh, and sometimes there's a waterfall not far from here that's pretty cool. It's not so great right now, but sometimes the snow melts and it gets pretty big. Max and JD dared me to jump off it, but I chickened out at the last second." Chuck had a wide-eyed, long-distance stare as he recalled happy memories for once in his life, and Rose's heart thawed. It was all she had ever wanted for the kid, and now he was getting the childhood he deserved.

As hard as Chuck was working to cram in every last nugget of their new home, Rose could only focus on one thing. "You get snow here?"

"Oh, yeah, one time it was higher than my hips. Gally threw me off the roof into it. It was like landing on a bed of nothing but pillows. If it wasn't so shucking cold, I woulda slept in it, too, prolly like the best night's sleep of my life!"

"Take a breath, Chuck," Rose laughed as she rested her hand on his shoulder.

"You shoulda been here, Rose, you woulda loved it."

Chuck's smile faded as Rose's head dipped, but he quickly recovered as he always did. "I'm sorry, I'm just, like, crazy excited to see you, and I probably shouldn't have said that. You know, I was the only one who knew you were still alive. No one else believed me."

Rose furrowed her brow. " _I_ didn't even know that. How did you?"

"Cuz you always come back."

He was so optimistic, so innocent, even after everything he had endured at WICKED's hands and whatever else might have happened since. Rose snatched him into a fierce hug, which he gratefully returned even tighter. When he pulled back, he added, "They tried to make us believe you were really gone. Hell, they even gave us a bunch of locks of your hair."

"What?" she shouted louder than she'd intended before she regained control. "That's pretty fucked up."

Chuck shrugged and pulled a chain out from under his cavernous shirt. "Kinda, I guess, but it was all we had of you, so we took it. Gally even made some of 'em into necklaces, see?"

At the end of the long chain was an oval pendant topped with some sort of clear resin in which a curled ember floated, unable to ever be extinguished.

"Gally did this?" Rose mused as her finger played over the glass-like casing.

Chuck nodded. "Not that I'd ever tell that baboon he's kinda talented, but yeah, I like it. Most of the guys still wear theirs, too. You don't think it's too girly, right?"

Now that she thought about it, she had noticed a hint of chain around both Alby's and Frypan's necks. They couldn't honestly be wearing her close to their hearts, could they?

Rose punched Chuck playfully in the shoulder to disguise the shimmer in her eyes. "What's wrong with girly, huh?"

He flinched and laughed all at the same time as he juked back. "Ow, nothing, okay! I never take mine off, promise. Look, I'm not complaining or anything," Chuck mumbled as he rubbed his shoulder, "but what took you so long to get back us?"

Rose sighed. She knew this question would show up at some point, she just hadn't expected it from Chuck. "Well, for starters, after my surgery, I was in a coma for four months. When they woke me up, everything had changed. I had to learn how to do everything again, like walk and eat, and they had to monitor for brain damage, stupid shit like that."

They exchanged smiles.

"Then WICKED shut down and I didn't have a ride here, not that I could have taken one. I didn't know what you'd built here, and I couldn't risk bringing the wrong people. For what it's worth, I'm sorry it took so long. This isn't exactly how I wanted things to play out." Rose smiled softly.

"Eh, I don't care," Chuck said. "You made it, and that's all that matters to me as long as you don't leave again."

Rose didn't reply—couldn't—not with her future so uncertain, but she nodded all the same.

"Oh, shit!" he said glancing down to a book in his hand. "I forgot to give this back to Barbie. She's going to fucking kill me!"

"Who's corrupting my Chuck?" Rose asked with her hand over her heart.

"You mean besides you?" Max answered.

Chuck grinned in a smooth way that told Rose in few more years, there'd be more than a fair share of young ladies looking for his company. "A lotta the girls like it. But don't worry, nobody says the f-word as much as you, Rose. Can you wait a second so I can drop this off at the Library? I don't want her to tell Fry to take away my taco rations again."

"Who is this woman, the Devil?" Rose teased.

"Barbie is _really_ serious about her books," Max noted solemnly.

Rose shooed away Chuck and bided her time strolling toward the edge of the lake as Max refused to let Chuck out of his sight. Flashes of sun winked off the gentle swells as some critter broke the surface with a soft splash. Further down the shore, a deer lapped at the water's edge and a boy and a girl shared a rickety bench under an azure sky.

Rose watched them, a tall, dark-haired man and an equally tall, dark-haired woman with their heads close and their hands knitted. The man must have sensed he was being watched because his head turned toward Rose. She steadied her breath and lowered her brim, but his gaze did not break, and Rose knew she'd been caught.

And then he rocketed up from his seat and barreled toward her.

"Oh shit," Rose cursed as she pivoted back toward the woods and ran as fast as her feet could carry her.

She glanced over her shoulder and found him chugging at top speed like he was hunting prey. Alby had mentioned thieves and worse, and Rose's adversary must have pegged her, the stranger, as one.

Rose had always been fast, but she'd only learned to walk again a handful of months ago, and her pursuer hadn't missed a day. She was toast. His hand hooked her backpack and jerked her backward, and she flopped to the ground on top of him.

Her hat slipped off, red fire igniting around her face as new rivers of white throughout tried to put it out. Rose wheezed for breath and struggled to focus as the world reoriented around her. Beneath her was an angular, masculine face with a soft spray of fine moles and curious-turned-shocked eyes.

"It _is_ you," he breathed, his arms wrapping around Rose's neck like a vice and crushing her against him.

"Thomas! I can't breathe," she gasped, tapping him on the shoulder. He loosened his grip but did not let go.

"I thought I was seeing things. I thought— We all thought—" Thomas hugged her again, not quite so tightly but just as passionately.

Rose collapsed into his embrace and smiled. "So did I."

"Roz?" said a tremulous voice above them. Rose glanced up to Teresa's beautiful face. She sported a necklace just like Chuck's, just like the one that peeped out from Thomas' shirt collar, too. "Roz!"

Rose jettisoned up from Thomas on a collision course with her friend. "Reese! You're here, too?"

Teresa pulled back and, with a sheepish smile, glanced down at the man in the grass. The implication was clear, but then it had always been clear for Teresa: _Where he goes, I go._

Rose's mind drifted back to the pair's joined hands and close faces, sharing a secluded bench on a beautiful day. Thomas and Teresa were a thing now. Eleven months was a long time to be gone after all…

A moment later, Chuck and Max joined their party, the ever-exuberant Chuck all teeth. "Of course Thomas found you, that shuck. You always find each other, huh? And you wanted to keep it low-key."

Rose glanced at Teresa, who had not missed Chuck's implication, and she held her friend tighter. If Teresa doubted it, Rose needed her to know she hadn't come back for Thomas. She was happy to see him but was even happier to see him with the girl who had pined for him against all odds.

"Thomas has never been able to keep anything low-key in his life," Rose ribbed as she nudged the fallen Runner with the toe of her boot.

Alby appeared behind one of the huts in classic business mode and caught Rose's eyes. He studied the posse critically for a moment but then jerked his head to the right as he added unceremoniously, "They're back."

Rose sobered instantly. Newt was here.

Alby ordered the others to stay as punishment for how much attention they had already drawn before he squashed Rose's hat haphazardly on her head. He grabbed her hand and tugged her back toward the woods as Chuck and Max's chorus of "ooh's" echoed around the basin.

She found Newt exactly as she had the first night they met, sitting on a stump with an ankle crossed over his knee. His hair was a bit shorter now, kissing the lobes of his ear rather than ruffling at his shoulder as it used to, and his cheek was fingerpainted with mud. His blackened fingers combed through a basket of mushrooms with skillful precision as he separated the good from the bad.

Alby cleared his throat and Newt glanced up. Rose's breath caught. His eyes glowed with honey in the shade of the forest, more wood sprite than man. He stared at her for a long moment, but if he was surprised to see her, he didn't show it.

"Oh good," Newt said cheerfully, "you're back. I could use an extra set of hands."

Rose opened her mouth to respond but choked on the sound.

"Have at it, girl," Alby said with a nod to both of them and left.

An empty stump waited beside him just as it used to outside her hut. For an inexplicable moment, she was paralyzed.

Newt raised an eyebrow. "Well, are you just going to stand there or are you going to pull your weight? Or have you forgotten that Rule since you've been gone?"

"No," she stuttered before she finally sat.

Newt divided his bushel onto a spare towel on her lap and returned to his work. "Just like old times, yeah?"

But Rose couldn't will her fingers to move. "Hey, Newt?"

"I'd rather you didn't," he said slowly. Out of the corner of her eyes, she watched Newt crush a mushroom in his fist. He quietly dropped it into his discard pile, but the image penetrated her.

Damnit, she never listened no matter how hard she tried. "I'm glad you're okay."

Another mushroom squashed, this one much more violently. His voice was low and cutting. "I'm not okay, Rose; I haven't been bloody okay. Contrary to what you might think looking at this place, none of us have been okay. You've been dead, and we've been heartbroken."

"I know."

"I woke up in that hospital bed alone, and you know my first thought? Where's Rose? Where's. Rose. Those doctors there, they wouldn't say a word. They stuck me with needles and took dozens of blood samples until I felt half-dead from it, and after a week of nothing, someone finally sent Teresa in. She was the first person to tell me they killed you to make some cure for an illness I didn't even know I could have. You were dead. Because of me."

"Not because of you! For you!" Rose swiveled to face him, sending an arc of mushrooms wheeling through the air.

Newt's voice dropped to a whisper as he busied his hands in his basket. "How are you here right now?"

"It's a lot to explain," she hedged. "WICKED lied to me, to all of us. I know that seems obvious since pretty much everything they said was a fucking lie, but they always told me, even when I worked for them, that in order to make a Cure for the Flare, the Subject wouldn't survive the operation. They were going to cut out part of my brain, and no one comes back from that.

"I had to believe that or my brain wouldn't produce the chemicals they needed to engineer the Cure. Its's hard to describe, but it had to come from of a place of true love. If I didn't honestly believe I was giving up everything for the people I love, it would have been for nothing. Everything had to be at stake."

Newt stilled. "But it wasn't real. They didn't kill you."

"Not this time," Rose laughed bitterly.

"Was any of it real?"

"Oh yeah," she said gravely. She removed her hat, turned around, and lifted the short ringlets at the base of her scalp, revealing a maroon scar that curled like a Cheshire grin from ear to ear. After a moment, Rose turned back around and lifted her layer of shaggy bangs to reveal another fresh scar along her hair line that completed the circumference of her head. "Real enough to scalp me and saw open my skull. They harvested the compounds my brain produced and reverse engineered them."

Newt's fingers danced across the scar at her forehead as though he wanted to be sure she wasn't tricking him again. He paused for a moment to drag his thumb over her eyebrow and down the length of her face, and then nodded. "Okay then. Glad you're alive."

Rose burst out laughing, the last of the mushrooms falling from her lap as her whole body shook. "You're something else, Newt."

Just then, a spritely girl, with blonde hair tinged with a hint of red and skin so pale it glowed crystalline even in the shade, surged into their wooded enclave. She beamed at Newt, but her smile faded abruptly at the sight of the stranger beside him.

"Oh, sorry," the girl stammered as her blue eyes bounced between the couple. They lingered on Rose's hair for a long moment, widening just a bit with something that Rose might have called recognition if it weren't for the fact that she'd never seen her before. The girl's attention returned to Newt, and he stared right back as though they were communicating. Finally, she cast a casual "Never mind" over her shoulder as she jogged away. There was something familiar about the way she spoke, but Rose couldn't put her finger on it.

Newt just shrugged and said, "We're always interrupted, aren't we?"

"Nice to see nothing's changed after all this time."

He grew solemn as he half-heartedly sorted the last of his mushrooms, and when he finally spoke, his voice was wary. "Have you seen Tommy yet?"

Newt. He was always worried about everybody else.

Rose nodded. "I have. And Teresa. It's okay, really. I think maybe that was one of those things always holding us back, like I knew I was always kinda in the middle of something bigger."

"He said he'd wait for you forever…" There was the smallest tinge of bitterness to Newt's words that surprised her almost as much as the words themselves, though she wasn't sure why that would bother Newt.

"How do you know about that?"

He chucked another half-squashed mushroom into the dirt and kicked it away with his boot. "Lotta late nights on our journey here. We were all pretty banged up after, you know. Nobody knew how to bloody slim it anymore except Minho—you couldn't get that shank to talk. Most of the others just wanted to remember, you know? When you only have a handful of memories anyway, you don't usually want to give up the few that are left, even if they bloody hurt."

Rose mumbled noncommittally.

"Are you staying?" he asked.

"I don't know," she replied. "I honestly didn't even plan on being found out, but Alby never misses a thing, does he?"

"No, he does not," Newt laughed. More seriously, he added, "I think you should stay. I don't care what any of these other shanks say. Stay, for me. So I can thank you for saving me."

Rose smiled, but she was faraway, back in a hospital bed with another boy whose heart she had broken. She felt a rivulet of icy fear trickle down her spine. "That's not really up to me."

"Course it is," Newt said sternly. "Rose, you have literally always done things on your terms and made us live by them, too. If you want to be with us, you will be."

"But it's about more than what I want."

For the first time in a while, Newt turned his full attention on her. "You know what I want. I don't really care what anybody else says."

 _If things had been different…_

"You make a compelling argument," Rose teased as she returned her attention to picking up her mushrooms.

"Oh, by the way," he said offhandedly, "I have something of yours back at my house."

Rose couldn't quell her excitement. "No way. You didn't!"

"I did. I made them go back for it. Wouldn't leave without it, and since they couldn't wait to get rid of Tommy, they were inclined to listen."

Her fiddle! Newt had kept it—of course he would have. Rose had given it up for lost, but now she could hardly wait to close her fingers around its neck.

They finished sorting in companionable silence, a huge smile splitting her face, and, as always, being with Newt soothed her agitated heart. She felt almost ready to take on anything or anyone.

Almost ready.

Chuck appeared with a freshly scrubbed face and cleaner clothes and smiled at the pair. "Don't mean to break up the bestie reunion, but we never got to finish our tour, Rose."

"Have fun," Newt said as Rose gathered up her produce and dropped it back in his basket. Before she disappeared again, he grabbed her wrist and threaded his fingers through hers. She felt Newt's boundless strength and endless selflessness travel through her like a current of electricity, swelling her chest and straightening her spine, and for a moment, she regretted nothing about her actions because someone as special as Newt was still in the world.

He released her and Rose followed Chuck along the perimeter of Shuckit. He showed her the Icebox, a bigger, sturdier version of the Slammer that got its name from how cold it got in the valley at night, and he showed her their Decision Tree, an enormous aspen beneath which they held town meetings. At last, they arrived at a house far-flung from the heart of the village.

Chuck suddenly turned to her and raised both eyebrows apologetically. "Sorry about this, Rose, but Alby said it's good for him."

"What?" she said sharply before Chuck banged on the door.

"She's back! She's back!" Chuck shouted. "Open the shuck up already, she's back!"

The door flung open and the frame was immediately filled with an irate face topped with a stiff peak of rich black hair. "You got a death wish, shuck-face? Tell Harriet I don't have time for her crazy klunk."

"Who's Harriet?" Rose asked as she stepped in from the outer orbit.

Minho stared blankly at her for a long moment as though he was trying to place her. His mouth hung open while his body went rigid.

Rose cleared her throat. "Aren't you going to invite—"

And the door slammed in her face.

Chuck glanced up to Rose with wide, jittery eyes and twisting hands. "Sorry, Rose, he's a little edgy ever since… well."

Minho still knew precisely how to push her buttons. Rose thought about smashing through the door when she remembered it had been months—almost a year—that Minho had believed she was dead. He had every right to be angry and she knew she deserved it, but she still had to check the passion that he provoked within her.

"Can you give us a minute, Chuck?" Rose whispered, and reluctantly, the kid joined Max a few huts down, but that didn't stop him from snooping.

Rose stuffed her pride and rapped gently on the door.

"Minho? Can I come in?"

No answer.

"Please?"

Silence.

"Okay, you're right. This wasn't fair of me, so I'll go. I just wanted you to know that I came back for you." She stifled a sour laugh and added, "But you probably knew that."

The door flew open again, and Minho grumbled, "Shuckin' right."

He snatched her wrist and yanked her inside, slamming the door behind them.

Though small, Minho's house was more refined than anything in the Glade. It was only one room, but the walls had been mudded to plug holes and there were even three small windows, albeit an eclectic collection recycled from some other unfortunate buildings along the way. In the darkest corner, there was a crude fireplace and chimney at the foot of his bed, and beside that was a chair at a small table littered with empty jars. On the opposite side of the house was a long counter with a hole cut for a sink basin and more jars.

"Nice place," Rose said.

Minho stared at her mercilessly, his arms crossed and his hands strategically tucked under his biceps. Even when he was angry, he was still showing off. Good, at least he still cared enough to want to show off.

"You look good," she added.

"Say what you gotta say, woman, before I throw you out."

Everything that Rose had rehearsed with the birds and the squirrels on her three-week long hike suddenly felt inadequate. She hadn't planned to enter the Gladers' new haven, but that didn't mean she hadn't fantasized about it—constantly. She had prepared herself for every possible outcome: making it through the door, never making it through the door, a lynch mob, a Gathering. She had prepared for everything but meeting those wild brown eyes again. Nothing she could say was good enough to answer to them.

"The Cure worked," she blurted.

 _Idiot_.

"That's great. You and your scientist buddies must be stoked it only took a couple dozen kid murders to achieve."

 _Idiot, idiot, idiot._

"That's not— I meant— I wasn't trying to brag. God, no matter how many times I practiced what I would say to you, I could never justify anything I did—I don't even want to. I'm not proud of it, Minho, I'm heartbroken. And I'm just so, so sorry. There's no way I can say it that will show you how much I mean it, which is why I'm just going to leave these with you."

Rose twisted around her backpack and extracted a large case. She pushed aside the jars on the table and snapped open the lid to reveal about fifty syringes sloshing with clear liquid.

"Make sure everyone here gets a dose except the people on this list, but especially make sure you give one to Newt and Chuck—I don't trust that WICKED already administered it. I don't know a lot of these people you got here, so I have no idea if they're Immune. One syringe-full will inoculate them permanently from the Flare. And there's one more thing." Rose placed a manila folder on the table and slid it toward Minho. "This is your WICKED file. They told me you refused to have your Swipe removed."

Minho didn't move, just cast a quick disinterested glance at the file. "I don't need to know who I was to know who I am now."

Rose tapped it softly once. "Well, in case you ever change your mind…"

"Did you read it?" he asked.

She nodded slowly. "I had to, for the Protocol."

"So you know everything about me, and it turns out I still know nothing about you."

She shook her head vehemently. "Everything I told you on our last day together—"

"On your _Death_ _Day_ ," he spat.

"—it was true. And if we had had more time, I would have told you absolutely everything. I _wanted_ to, but WICKED wouldn't let me."

"So, you listened to them but never listened to me."

Rose swallowed a guttural growl. She was so frustrated she felt like smashing every jar on the table until he understood. How could she explain it to him, how she felt and why she had done it? How could she show him the depths of her heart? She thought they had reached some sort of understanding their last day together, but that bridge had burned, and Rose had been the one to light the match.

There was a long pause as a stalemate ensued. Rose looked for a necklace, something to prove Minho still thought about her. He wasn't wearing one—he was the only one, god, that stung—but then her eyes fell to his left ring finger. He was wearing a ring where a wedding ring would be.

Eleven months was a long time.

She thought of the young woman and the baby whose features she hadn't been able to make out. She thought of Harriet, the name he'd been first to say.

Almost a year...

 _Damn Chuck and Alby for forcing me to see how much I've really lost._

Minho's eyes bored a hole into the folder as though he could melt it with just a little more effort. "Why are you giving these to me?"

"I only ever wanted to protect you, to save all of you, but I understand. You've all built something spectacular here without me, something so much better, and I shouldn't have intruded. This time, I'll save you from me. I only came to make amends. I understand that you can never forgive me—hell, I can never forgive myself. I just don't want to hurt you anymore, so I'll go like I promised." Rose took a step closer, her heart on her lips. "But I want you to know that none of it was ever a lie, not before, not after; the Cure wouldn't have worked otherwise. Minho, you're the realest thing I've ever known."

Rose gathered what was left of her courage and closed the distance between them. She risked placing her hands on his folded forearms and reached up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. He smelled the same: dirty and rugged and inescapable.

"Thank you for loving me," she whispered against his skin.

Minho didn't move a muscle, but as Rose headed towards the door, her very life force draining out of her as she gave up her impossible dream, he said, "Why did you choose me?"

She smirked gently. "I always thought you chose me. You won't remember—it's not even in your file—but I do. I was fourteen, lost and sobbing in a dark hallway. You were the unexpected hero who showed up and gave me hope. You swept me off my feet, literally."

Minho's arms fell to his side as he grappled with Rose's revelation. "We knew each other before?"

"Just once," she said with a soft smile. "But that was all it took. Goodbye, Minho."

Rose squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn't have to see what she had to leave behind, and she hurried through the door. As soon as it closed behind her, she sagged against it. She had had weeks to prepare for this outcome, but she could have had years and it wouldn't have been enough.

 _Well, it's a long hike back to nowhere. Plenty of time to cry my eyes out then._

When Rose was finally ready to face the world, she opened her eyes and found seven familiar faces waiting for her.

"Well, that was shucking rough," said Gally.

"Yup," she retorted flatly.

"You dummy," Frypan scolded with a sharp elbow to the Builder's ribs.

Gally scowled. "What was I supposed to say?"

"How 'bout nothing, klunk-for-brains?" said Alby said as he butted Gally's forehead with the meat of his palm. "And you sure as hell don't say _that_. Now she knows we were listening."

Teresa put an arm around her friend's shoulder. "You can stay with me… and Tom if you want."

The dark-haired beauty looked nervous at her confession, but Rose allayed her fears by resting her head on her shoulder. "I appreciate it, Reese, but I should get going."

"You're not staying?" Thomas asked.

Rose gave the smallest shake of her head.

"Oh, come on," groused Newt, "don't leave on account of that arrogant slinthead. His pride's just hurt you didn't choose him over saving the world."

"Why are you all so eager to take me back?"

Everyone's eyes snapped to Rose. Her voice was small but her question loomed large.

"What do you mean?" Frypan asked. "We love you."

As if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Maybe it was.

"Yeah, we're family, duh," Chuck added.

"Not me, shuck-faces," snapped Gally. "I just want her for her body."

Newt and Alby raised matching eyebrows as Fry put his hands on his hips and stared venomously at the Builder. Teresa and Thomas folded their arms and narrowed their eyes as Rose sensed a storm brewing—evidently so did Gally.

"What?" he growled, and Chuck nudged him. All of a sudden, the Builder's face turned a brilliant crimson. "Shuck, you're all a bunch of perverts. I meant cuz she's still got those biceps, the Builders could use her. Not me. I wouldn't use her. I wouldn't use you, not like that, Rose, I swear."

"'Not like that,' huh? So you'd still use me?"

"Shuck," he barked and burned hotter until Rose nudged him and offered a smile and his haunches finally lowered.

"Anil would have wanted her to be a Peacekeeper," volunteered Alby.

Newt shook his head. "You know Jeff will want her back."

"She was always supposed to be a Cook," grumbled Frypan.

Rose rolled her eyes. "Okay, now I know you're all lying. You called me a 'shuck Cook,' Fry."

The Keeper of the Cooks pouted his lip. "I just said that to help you become a Runner."

She laughed. "I love you all, too."

"That settles it," said Alby. "Stay for a bonfire tonight. You can decide in the morning what you want to do."

With that, their leader walked away to delegate chores, and most of the others broke off to prepare. Only Newt and Gally lingered.

The Builder waited until Newt's back was turned and then bent down and pecked Rose lightning-fast on the cheek. A bug-eyed stare was the only response she could manage.

"What?" he demanded. "I'm still a Keeper, which means I can do what I want."

Rose raised an eyebrow. "Shouldn't you be as mad at me as you always are at Thomas?"

"Probably more so," he conceded.

"Then why aren't you?"

Gally pursed his lips before he punched her lightly in the shoulder. "Aw, cram it, slinthead. It's just like you to wanna look a gift horse in the mouth."

Rose smiled and whispered in his ear before she kissed him back, "The necklaces are beautiful, by the way."

"You've spent too much time with that shuck-face, Thomas," Gally muttered while he scrubbed his cheek as though he were wiping away her kiss and not the rosy stains that emblazoned them. He turned on his heel and added, "Such a slinthead."

Once it was just Rose and Newt, she could finally relax. She loved being with her boys again, but it was exhausting keeping up appearances when all she wanted to do was collapse against a tree trunk and sob her eyes out. But with Newt, she didn't have to hide—he would never let her. He held her hand and led her away from the other half of her heart.

"You all right?" Newt asked as they neared the bench where she had found Thomas and Teresa only a short while ago.

Rose sat down beside him, their hands still clasped. "Overwhelmed, I guess."

"Thinking about Minho?"

When was she not?

Rose only answered with a shrug of one shoulder.

"He'll come round." Newt's eyes drifted out to the center of the lake, to the reflection of the soaring marshmallow clouds and the slowly sinking sun. "So. You two, huh?"

Rose joined his faraway gaze. "Yeah."

"I didn't know you felt that way about each other. Last time we talked about it, you were confused about your feelings, but it looks like you sorted things out."

She exhaled slowly. "Minho didn't say anything?"

Newt shook his head. "But it makes sense why he's been a miserable wanker this last year. Well, I mean, more than he usually is."

He wrenched his eyes from the lake to focus them on his friend. He encircled their joined hands with his other one and leaned in, and her heart somersaulted. "Listen, Rose, if I knew you two felt that way about each other, I would have never said what I said at the Cliff. I was hurt and I thought I was going to die and—"

"Don't," she interjected. "Please don't take it back. I wouldn't be here without your love. Neither would you."

They passed another moment in silence. Her eyes slipped from Newt's face to the chain that dipped below his shirt. Seemed everyone had one except Minho, and Rose's heart clenched painfully, enough to make her want to double-over.

To distract herself, she squeezed Newt's hand and said, "I heard you were one of the few who wanted your memories back."

"I always felt a large part of me was missing, but there was nothing I could ever do to feel complete. And then I—I did a really dumb thing that cost me more than my leg—it cost me my pride, maybe more."

Rose pulled her hand from his and curled it around his neck, pulling his forehead to hers. She tried to hold his gaze, but he wouldn't open his eyes. "Newt—"

He jerked back and rubbed his hands on his thighs as though he were freezing. "Forget it. My point is since I woke up in that Box, I've been looking for something, and I thought getting my memories back, no matter what they were, might fill in those holes, and maybe it did some of them, maybe they left others. But for now, Rose, I—I have somebody I want you to meet."

For some reason, Rose's heart raced. She'd seen lots of strangers around town, beautiful girls with fire in their eyes and dirt on their hands, but somehow she never expected to really meet any of them. One of them had filled the hole in Newt's heart, and now she was about to meet her. Rose felt dizzy.

Newt turned around and waved over his shoulder, though Rose didn't see anybody. After a moment, the strawberry blonde she had seen earlier in the woods emerged from one of the shacks. The girl had a wide, familiar-looking smile that made Rose feel like she could trust her instantly, and suddenly she felt silly for the strange pang that had just needled her. Whoever she was, she had done for Newt what Rose never could, and Rose had to be grateful for that.

She returned the girl's smile. "Hi, I'm Rose."

"I know," the girl said cheerfully. "I recognized you earlier."

Recognized her? Rose traced three lifetimes' worth of memories but could not place the other teenager. "Sorry, I don't—"

"Rose," Newt interjected as he stood up and looped his arm around the girl's shoulders, "this is my little sister Lizzy."

"Everyone else calls me Sonya. You can call me whatever you like." More of that inviting smile.

Rose glanced between the two siblings. As they stood side-by-side, she could easily connect the dots she had missed completely earlier. Their eyes were the same shape as were their jaws. The first time they had met, Rose had thought the girl's voice sounded strange, but now she noticed a hint of Lizzy's accent, muddled perhaps from their long years apart.

Rose issued an astonished laugh. "Oh! Oh my God, that's awesome! I mean, I can't believe it, that you found each other after all this time."

"Yeah, pretty crazy, right? This whole time, I was in Group B with the other girls and this stick was only one Maze away." Lizzy interlaced her fingers with her brother's and smiled adoringly up at him. "We were lucky. I mean, I was lucky. Things could have turned out really differently, you know? Thanks for looking out for my big brother when I couldn't, Rose."

Newt shoved Lizzy's shoulder with his own. "I don't need anyone to look out for me."

"Bollocks," she retorted. "We all know you boys can't take care of yourselves for crap."

He furrowed his brow at his sister. "You do know we built an entire village from nothing in two years?"

"Child's play," Lizzy volleyed back. "We girls built a damn empire."

Rose watched as the two jostled each other back and forth, and she noted the crinkles at the corners of Newt's eyes and the way they sparkled as he looked at his little sister. In that moment came a warm realization. Rose had done the right thing. She may not have done it all the right way, but she didn't regret saving him. She couldn't picture the world without him, couldn't picture his sister's world without him.

"So, Rose," Lizzy said as she landed one last emphatic slap against her brother's chest, "if you want, a little later I can show you where the girls wash up, and you can rifle through my closet and see if there's anything that might fit you."

"Oh, you really don't have to do any of that," Rose objected.

"Bollocks," Lizzy swore again. "You saved my brother's life, I think you can borrow a shirt."

Rose nodded and Lizzy beamed before she said goodbye and bounded off. Newt watched Lizzy's watermelon braid swing behind her as she disappeared into town, and Rose grinned. "She's awesome, Newt. You look pretty happy."

"She is, and I guess I am. Everything feels different now. It's more than just knowing we're free, we feel free, too. And maybe that's all another illusion, but this one I can live with."

Rose joined his side as she followed his gaze into the heart of town, assessing the other teenagers like them and the other odd assortment of stragglers they had somehow picked up along the way. She watched a toddler scoop up chunks of rocks and hurl them aimlessly into the street before his mother could swoop in and scold him. Newt was right: if it was an illusion, it was a beautiful one.

"I promise you, Newt, WICKED is gone. I was there when they shut down the facility. I hurled a chair at the Control Room monitor myself."

He closed his eyes. "I guess they're just off to live the rest of their lives as if nothing happened, huh? Maybe some of them will show up here someday."

Rose pictured Ava's face as she had escorted Rose out of the facility and locked the doors behind them with a final click. The Chancellor's skin had been even more drawn, her wrinkles deeper and the bags under her eyes darker as her demons were finally coming to claim her, but otherwise, it had all been terribly anti-climactic. No showy speeches, no apologies, no excuses. Just that click followed by the fading snap of heels as the no-longer Chancellor of anything walked into her Berg and left Rose standing on the buckling asphalt under a blazing evening sun.

"I guess," Rose shrugged.

"Well, no point fighting it," he replied more cheerfully. "We're here now, you're here now, and that's all that matters to me. There's one more thing I wanted to share with you, and I promise I'll never bring it up again."

Rose hoped it wasn't another introduction—she really couldn't take any more surprises today. Instead, the blonde reached for her, but his fingers just grazed her wrist before he pulled back.

"I heard what you said."

She raised an eyebrow. "Huh?"

"Back in the compound, at my bedside, I heard what you said."

"Oh."

Rose felt a sudden rush of embarrassment and she tugged her t-shirt. She had never actually pictured having to answer for what she confessed, and she hoped Newt didn't hold it against her. Instead, he wrapped his wiry arms around her and pulled her flush against him. He didn't have Thomas's recklessness or Minho's raw power, but Newt had sincerity in spades.

He brushed his lips against the pulse in her neck and mumbled, "Forever and always."

Her cheeks heated as her arms slipped up his back. Her heart was still a mess, now more than ever since it had just been rent in two, but Newt was forever in it.

"Forever and always," she answered into his shaggy hair.

When he pulled back, his cheeks were as red as hers and he was smiling stupidly. "Now, come on. I'll show you where to find that bloody stubborn slinthead so we can make this right and convince you to stay with us once and for all."

Without another word, Newt guided Rose to the edge of town to a path through a stand of pine. Sap and damp filled her nostrils as they hiked a little higher. Eventually, the trail fanned out into a large dirt clearing filled with some finely crafted wooden crosses—Gally's work probably—and a broad, brooding back.

He stood there unmoving, head bowed and hands shoved in his pockets.

"I'll see you back in town," Newt said and patted her on the shoulder before disappearing into the woods.

Quietly, Rose pulled up alongside the other man and followed the line of wooden markers: Clint, Winston, Anil, Omar, Jonas, Ender, and two other names she didn't recognize. And one she definitely did.

 _Our Rose._

The inscription was bookended with two flowers inlaid with pebbles for petals. On top was a weathered piece of wood whittled to look like a rose—Chuck's handiwork this time. It was pretty. It was heartbreaking.

She glanced down. There were hundreds of footprints here, all the same tread, and a couple more empty jars.

"You always come back to haunt me," Minho said after a long moment.

Rose didn't answer. How could she?

"Feels like I'm buried here, too," he continued. "It's like I never left that place, the Glade or wherever the hell we were after that. Sometimes I wish I was back in it—how shucked up is that? At least I had a purpose back then. And I had you."

"Minho..."

At last, he turned to her, those rich brown eyes scorching her with their honesty. "I told you I'd never be fine without you."

Rose wanted to believe him, knew she should, but one thing held her heart back from her greatest hope. Her eyes fell to his ring. "What about that?"

"This?" With some effort, Minho pulled it over his knuckle and she could see a sharp tan line like it had never been off. "Gally made it for me."

He handed it to Rose and she examined it up close. There was a small rectangular medallion on the front topped with what she had thought was a faceted gem, but as she studied it, she discovered it was only shaped resin and, floating beneath, an apostrophe of red and white hairs.

"You were my forever, Rose—you _are_. I could never forget you or us even if I wanted to."

 _Say something, Rose!_

"I missed you, Min. So fucking much."

 _Nice. Keep it classy…_

Minho's hands were on her now, one at neck and the other around her waist, and he swept her to him. Rose's heart thrashed and her breath surged eagerly. He watched her carefully, those eyes mapping her need from the flush at her lips to the pleading in her eyes. His hand crept under the back of her shirt and then stopped.

"That a gun in your waistband or are you just happy to see me?"

She smiled ruefully. "Kiss me right now or you're going to find out the hard way."

With that, Minho smothered her mouth with his. Rose thought she would suffocate beneath his kiss, but she'd never been so happy to die. Her tongue matched his in passion eleven months and three lifetimes in the making, as though not one moment had passed between them. Her fingers raced into his hair and delighted in that familiar softness, and he hummed into her mouth.

No more goodbye kisses, just hellos from here on out.

Minho pulled back just enough to break their kiss, but he rocked his forehead against hers and nuzzled his nose across her skin. "What took you so long to get here?" he panted.

"Do brain surgery, a coma, and a three-week hike through the wilderness count?" she answered with a smirk.

"Excuses, excuses."

He brushed Rose's hair away from her face, and as he did, he revealed the garish scar along her scalp. His knuckles cracked and he snarled. "What did those monsters do to you?"

"It doesn't matter," Rose said as she slipped her fingers under his shirt and played about the hidden skin. "I'd do it a hundred times to get back to the man I love."

Minho narrowed his eyes. "The man you love? Who's that unlucky shank?"

Rose returned his gaze with her signature pucker. "An egomaniac who doesn't know when to shut up."

"Oh, so, no one I know?"

Rose laughed and pinched that tender skin at his waist before she kissed him with her whole heart.

"I love you, Minho," she whispered against his lips—the shape of her inevitability. "And I'm sorry about—"

But he cut her off with his thumb stroking her bottom lip. "Shuck, Doc, I don't give a klunk about that, none of it. There was nothing fake about our night together or the way I felt inside you."

Her breath hitched and he heard it. He licked his lips and smiled devilishly. "Skip the bonfire. Come home with me. You know, my house has a bed."

"You're impossible."

"Impossibly good-looking. Besides, I only meant so you can check out my badass new scar," he said, guiding her hand further up under his shirt to the rugged ring of scar tissue left from the Griever battle. "You're still a Med-jack, ain't ya? What'd you think I meant, pervert?"

Rose sighed dramatically but continued to trace the outline of what could have been a very different future. Minho stilled her hand and lifted her chin up to meet his gaze.

"Rose." God, her name sounded delicious on his lips. "You're staying."

Not a question because it wasn't up for debate. As long as Minho wanted her, she would be by his side.

"I love you," he whispered, and she folded into his arms so he could rest his cheek on her crown. They stayed there like that, immersed in each other on an empty grave, until the sun dipped below a mountain peak.

Despite the ring of stone behemoths, Rose had never seen a sky so open, lavender and lapis lazuli already studded with silver starlight. Beneath it, they were embraced by twilight and then loved by the moonlight. It wasn't long before the galaxy burst forth in full splendor, no longer a gaping wound but another beautiful scar to add to Rose's collection.

And when Minho finally saw fit to share her with the rest of Shuckit, Rose reveled first in the heat of the bonfire, then the heat of Frypan's saucy-sauce and the fiddle-driven dancing that followed, until at last she felt the heat of Minho's love just for her as they tumbled into that blessed bed.

Maybe, just maybe, her luck had finally changed.

* * *

 _*credits roll*: Uhm Jung Hwa - Ending Credit_

 _A/N: I'm deeply saddened to have arrived at the end of the longest thing I've ever written. Writing this book was an absolute joy and swept me away as much as I hope it did you. Did you have a favorite moment? Though Newt/Rose wasn't endgame (sorry), I think my favorite was when she played her song for him. It felt so sweet and genuine, and it just makes me happy when I reread it. (Is it weird that they don't feel like characters I controlled? Feels like a lot of this story sort of happened without my permission—ha! I honestly don't even remember writing many of these scenes, so best give credit to the Muse who did.)_

 _If it's any consolation for any unrequited 'ship, Newt lived a long and happy life with his beloved sister kicking ass by his side, and Thomas and Teresa regained each other's trust and rekindled their own special connection (because I don't care what the haters say, I love them together). Everyone got married off to my beautiful readers (Who's the lucky shank who got my treasure, Fry? He needs more love!), and they helped remake the world. They all lived next door to each other, and their kids went to school together, and they all lived happily ever after because they fucking deserved it! *heavy breathing*_

 _Final IMPORTANT note: I know "The XX Protocol" was a reverse harem in the tradition of many animes and K-dramas, etc., where the girl ultimately follows her heart to one fellow, but dis my fanfic, and who says it's gotta stay that way?_

 _For any of my lovelies who were wondering about how the boys could *ahem* share… Stay tuned for bonus long-ass short-story additional chapters exclusively on my Wattpad account (YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS. To be added next Friday, per usual as an add-on to this story)—pure smut for the sake of it because poor Newt needs to get in on that action, too, and I totally cockblocked him so many times, it's not fair. AND HE AIN'T THE ONLY ONE (wait, wut.)… Consider it a one-shot fanfic to my fanfic, lol. God, I'm so self-indulgent, but, oh yeah, I still dgaf. Thank you for reading! Please let me know how you liked the whole thing!_


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